


Incoming Package

by HelloAmHere



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Bedsharing, M/M, Sexual Content, Space Pirates, What Is Wrong With ME, come on how is that not a tag, computer Liam, computer Zayn, evil capitalism, maybe this belongs in some sorta twisted tech industry fandom as well, some discussion of bombs and war, some discussion of war crimes and galactic level evil, some mention of mental health, the importance of valuing contract workers in a polarizing economy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-05-29 07:19:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15068009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelloAmHere/pseuds/HelloAmHere
Summary: There weren’t a lot of pilots who were willing to be couriers and there weren’t a lot of pilots who were willing to be couriers who were under six feet tall and capable of doing cheaply with oxygen and there weren’t a lot of pilot couriers under six feet tall and oxygen trained who would take a job like this from AMAZON. Even if COD Harry Styles was on the other end of the elevator to hell.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is an absurd drabble that came out of the blender that is my brain a while ago
> 
> OUR PREMISE is that Amazon (the technology company) is evil, and we're in the far future, that's basically all the explanation that you get for this, also I'm sorry

BEGIN TRANSMISSION

_Source: Astrophysical Mail Aid: Zootrophic Ontology Network_

_Shipping Manifesto_

_InterspatialTemporal Transport_

_Information Category: HIGHLY CLASSIFIED_

_Priority zero-ten scale: Eleven_

_Object 1: Cargo Freight Boxes 356; 50lb_

_Object 2: Oxygenated environment; six hours (energy cost .25 earth units)_

_Object 3: Human (male); suit specification: 5’9”; designation: Courier (Second Class)_

_Special Notes: do not repeat do not fail this transmission do not interrupt this message do not let anything back through scrub all received audio repeat scrub all received audio_

END TRANSMISSION

 

BEGIN TRANSMISSION

_source: Military Remote 34771, call sign, Sparrow, last known COD, Harry Styles (Legionnaire, Highest Honors, Extraordinary Class)_

  _(audio clip, incomplete)_

_what the fuck_

_Interstella--no, no, don’t you cut me out don’t_

_pick up the god damn_

_bastards_

_I know you’re sending_

_Fucking dammit_

 

END TRANSMISSION

 

***

 

_Go for courier_

Said the automated voice.

“Go for courier,” Louis said, in a much raspier voice, but in his defense, three hours of suit prepping and nobody had even misted the inside of his mouth. Fluids strictly contained, they’d said. Louis was resolutely very much _not_ thinking about any part of his body right now, fluids or not.

_You don’t have to repeat commands_

Said the voice, helpfully.

_All commands are now transferred to automation_

“Just old fashioned,” Louis said, “Not how we did it on Mars, you know.”

_Courier is on target, systems are on target_

_No human direction needed for this part, astronaut Louis Tomlinson_

Said the voice. Snippily. Mars was a long way from here, although not by way of automation.

“Thanks for that, bit of AI goes a long way, huh, can’t believe AMAZON sprang for it even here in this crazy shuttle pod,” Louis said.

_Astrophysical Mail Aid will handle the rest of your journey, astronaut Louis Tomlinson_

_Please relax_

_recommendation suggests you prefer Lou_

“Full name, stranger. I’m super relaxed,” Louis said.

_Body temperature is elevated. Sweat glands are activated. Please be advised the environment is precisely sustained for six hours of human occupation and unnecessary activity may impact these parameters._

“Super relaxed,” Louis said. 

 

***

 

The fact was that despite all the technology, you could still only ship cargo to the deep ends of space through the interdimensional time shift if you had a living, breathing human consciousness to ship it with. It gave Louis a certain satisfaction in a job that was otherwise pretty much jam-packed with arguing with glorified toasters and anxious algorithms. Courier work was...well, it was what it was, but Louis’ sisters were in school, and that wasn’t something that happened for everybody.

He was a spectacular pilot though, and that was _fun._ AMAZON only hired the best and he’d made himself the best in a lot of different things. Mostly in the not-giving-a-fuck-about-harms-way things, the jobs where the computers would fail and you’d need a steady human hand on a wheel to make sure that medicine or food or some rich guy’s pet elephant got delivered. The former jobs were better than the latter, of course, but Louis didn’t get to choose.

There weren’t a lot of pilots who were willing to be couriers and there weren’t a lot of pilots who were willing to be couriers who were under six feet tall and capable of doing cheaply with oxygen and there weren’t a lot of pilot couriers under six feet tall and oxygen trained who would take a job like this from AMAZON. Even if COD Harry Styles _was_ on the other end of the elevator to hell.

 

***

 

The elevator to hell was the InterspatialTemporal Transport and supposedly it actually changed your relationship to space-time enough so that you came out a little younger than everybody else.

Not by much. By like, a few seconds. Louis flipped through his briefings for days and days while he tuned out physics lectures that he didn’t need and thought, not for the first time, that AMAZON was incredibly full of itself. Like they were giving you a miracle, a few extra seconds of life in exchange for signing your body away to act as a temporary glorified shipping container.

 

***

 

_wake up_

_wake up_

_wake up astronaut Louis Tomlinson_

“So awake,” Louis said, drooling. He opened his eyes and stopped drooling. His smart suit had started wrapping itself up on re-entry and he’d drooled right up the inside of his helmet. His stomach had gotten itself confused with his brainstem and they were dancing it out. Ugh, terrible. Back home the nanobots would’ve cleaned the helmet up for him but here they were so constrained in what they could ship this far out that everything was manual, and clumsy.

_Automation ending to conserve energy astronaut Louis Tomlinson_

“Are we here?” Louis asked. Stupid question, because he’d be dead if he weren’t, right? It was all stars and stars and stars outside. He tried not to drool again. He’d never seen this far into space and honestly this was really why he’d come. He wondered if COD Harry Styles (Extraordinary Class: Hero, although that wasn’t an official designation, but that’s what everyone said, even the couriers said it)--if he’d have a second to snap a photo. For the girls.

_good luck astronaut Louis Tomlinson_

 

***

 

BEGIN TRANSMISSION

_Source: Astrophysical Mail Aid: Zootrophic Ontology Network -- Military Command_

_CLOSE AND LOCK, INITIATE. REPEAT: CLOSE AND LOCK, INITIATE._

END TRANSMISSION

 

***

 

Louis stepped into the _Sparrow_ through the airlock and met the business end of a laser pistol.

“Don’t think I don’t know why you’re here,” snarled a frazzled looking hot guy with a bandana wrapped around his head.

“Don’t think I--” Louis said slowly, hands in the air, “Sorry, what? Double negative, hard to follow.”

“Shut up,” said the hot guy with wild eyes. “Shut up, you’re under arrest. No, you’re drafted. I can’t believe they sent you, I can’t believe they sent you. I can’t believe there’s another _person.”_

His voice cracked, right down the middle. It sent a sympathetic pain through Louis’ heart. This guy looked like he’d been alone for aeons. His eyes were big and scared and sweet. Louis lowered his hands.

“Look, I’m just--”

“Back up,” the guy screeched. Louis put his hands back up and glared. It was uncomfortable in the space suit, and he was sweating buckets, and this was the first time he’d ever gone through the shift and he didn’t feel even a couple of seconds younger.

“What have you done with Harry Styles?” Louis asked.

“What the fuck,” the guy said, “I know why you’re here and I won’t let you--”

“I’m just bringing you some god-damn _food!_ Don’t shoot the _messenger!”_ Louis yelled, because the laser pistol was right in his fucking face and the guy was in his face too and the guy was clearly military, because he was grappling with Louis’ raised hands and twisting them behind his back. It hurt, his elbow cartilege popping and the suit beeping in his ears.

“I’m Harry Styles,” the guy said, “And you’re dead.”

Louis was about to get very angry indeed but he was interrupted by the fact that the world exploded behind them.

 

***

Cargo Freight Boxes 365 had been stowed underneath Louis’ seat in the pod and it had been made very clear to him that it was of utmost importance that they get to the _Sparrow._ Whether or not courier astronaut Louis Tomlinson survived was of lesser importance. Louis hadn’t thought much of it. We couldn’t all be heroes with our portraits in classrooms like Harry Styles.

***

 

“Li,” Louis yelled, “What was that?”

He was coughing through the smoke. The blast from the pod had blown him apart from the space madman claiming to be Harry Styles, thankfully, but Supposedly Harry Styles was still there on the other side of the ship hallway and he still had his laser pistol and he was still losing his goddamn mind.

_I sealed the entrance when I detected the explosives. You’re welcome kiddos._

Said an automated voice from the ceiling. It sounded velvet and bored at the same time.

“Li,” Louis whispered into the commlink in his suit glove, “What the fuck, Li, what the fuck, that was my ride home.”

“The bastards,” Harry Styles was yelling, “I can’t believe they sent, what, a _teenager_ to try and off me? God.”

“Oi,” Louis spluttered, “I am not a teenager!”

_He’s just small_

The voice said.

Louis sat down heavily in the hallway and glared in all directions. There wasn’t really anywhere else to go.

“I am a truly excellent Courier, and this was not the job I took on,” Louis said. “I just thought, drop off a few microwave meals to the military base, sure, maybe get a look out the viewport and tell everybody I’d seen deep space. Shake hands with Harry Styles, I don’t know.”

Debris was drifted through the holographic viewport that the ship’s system was kindly displaying on the wall. It looked a lot like Louis’ ride home. His ears were ringing.

Harry Styles sat down, unexpectedly, and stared back at him. He looked very ragged and not very much like a military hero who had been successfully and valiantly and magnificently holding the last line of resistance against the rebellious hordes of D-Mack Four. He was startlingly handsome and he looked almost too sad to be taken seriously.

“You’re under arrest,” Harry said, laser pistol limp in his lap.

“Ok, sure,” Louis said, letting his head hit against the ship wall. Then he fainted, because, why the hell not.

 

***

 

Louis came to on a thick white mattress and blinked at the overhead lamp.

“This is the brig,” Harry said. He was standing by the bed and he looked a little bit fresher. Handsome, still. Louis stared at the lamp and tested his vision, first one eye, then the second.

“It looks like a med bay,” Louis said.

“I’m the commanding officer in this part of of the galaxy and I can designate any space aboard this vessel a brig,” Harry hissed, “Including a med bay. Which is just a strategic place to be in unstable situations. Also, you’re now drafted into my command you’ll do as I say.”

“You’ve got no jurisdiction,” Louis said, “I’m under contract with the Mail division of AMAZON and they’re your bosses, too.”  

Harry crossed his arms over his chest. He didn’t have the laser pistol, Louis noticed.

“You’re an entire shift out of earth space,” Harry said, low and threatening voice that did something spectacular to Louis’ stomach. “So it’s all military command out here, and I’m in charge.”

“I’m gonna punch you in the face,” Louis said, “As soon as I can figure out how to move my arms.”

Harry looked sympathetic, and then wiped the look off his face.

“Shift sickness,” he said, “That’s why you’re in the med bay. Which is also the brig. I’m going to ask you questions now and I want you to answer honestly, ok? Ready, Z?”

“Louis,” Louis said, but it was the automated voice who was responding:

_ready as I’ll ever be captain officious_

“Z,” Harry said to the ceiling, “This is a precarious situation!”

_he’s too shift sick to move_

“I’m gonna punch you in the face and pull the plug on your idiot computer,” Louis said, “Li, you hear me? Pull the plug.”

“Did you know they sent you with a bomb?” Harry asked bluntly.

“What the fuck, no,” Louis said, “They sent me with granola bars. Maybe freeze dried dairy, I don’t know, sometimes that’s what we ate on Mars. Sometimes it was just rice for like two months straight and then beef showed up and my mom cried. I figured they were sending you beef. Aren’t you a military hero?”

“Is that what they’re teaching you?” Harry said.

_he’s not lying, except maybe it was more like three months_

The automated voice sounded snarky. _Slight tremor on that one. Maybe he cried, not the mom, I dunno._

“Stop editorializing, Z, just tell me when he’s lying,” Harry said. He leaned close in over the bed and bit his lip.

_hm he might be lying now_

_Elevated pulse_

_Oh wait_

_Sorry_

_He’s just attracted to you_

“I can’t believe my life,” said Louis. He was starting to regain feeling in his toes but Harry’s eyes were firmly fixed up at the ceiling and he was flushed now, so Louis thought he could keep the advantage of surprise.

“Why don’t you tell me why they would be trying to kill you at all, when you’re their hero,” Louis said, hoping he sounded placating and knowing that he probably didn’t given what he knew about the sound of his own voice.

Harry rubbed the back of his neck. He looked at Louis and looked a little worried. Louis tried to look sickly, and innocent.

“Budge up,” Harry said, crawling onto the med bay bed and wrapping his arm around Louis.

“Whaaaaaat the fuuuuuuuck,” Louis whispered. He hadn’t known he had it in him to look _that_ innocent and needy.

Harry rolled his eyes. “It’s the standard medical treatment for shift disorientation, reground the body in its instincts,” he said, a little aggressively, like someone was going to challenge him on it. It did feel extremely nice, Harry’s pulse and skin on skin in the touch of his arm behind Louis’ neck. Louis was pretty sure that he had the use of his arms now.

“Why is it so dark in here?” Louis asked suspiciously. It was dim and getting dimmer. Harry was so warm, his breath so steady. Louis was trying very hard to not be comforted by it but, it was truly comforting. Harry sighed.

“Preserving life systems to just one bed is the safest strategy right now,” he said.

“That seems….ok. Look, we’re gonna figure this out, I really didn’t know about the bomb,” Louis said.

“Everything they told you is a lie,” Harry said. “Everything. I believed it too. I got here and the rebellion--it wasn’t real. They just wanted to turn the planet into a slave colony, make drones out of all the workers. Our orders were to firebomb the place.”

“The battle of D-Mack Four,” Louis said, “No, I mean, the battle, they were--”

“They weren’t launching anything at _earth,”_ Harry said, “Earth was launching at _them._ I took control of the Sparrow and I sent the entire crew back through the shift and I closed it after them. Everything’s backwards and flipped around out here. I’m not the last line of defense for Earth. I’m the line of defense for D-Mack Four. I switched sides.”

_Elevated pulse_

The voice said, helpfully.

_Oh shit_

_Haz_

“Zayn will you shut up?” Harry said, “I’m trying to have a moment with my new shipmate?”

_Well hello Android Z class what a long time_

A different voice rang out from the ceiling, british and villainous.

“Holy hell,” Harry yelled, “Are you losing it, Zayn? Why did you change voice protocols?”

“Aha, that’s Liam,” Louis said. He whipped his newly-functional arm around to grab the oxygen cord dangling by the side of the bed and threw it around Harry’s neck. The grappling smashed their faces close together, but he had his fist closed tight around the cord, pinning Harry down against the pillow.

_It’s an AMAZON LIBRARY component_

Zayn said, his sardonic automated voice rising into something like intrigue

_It’s really bloody smart_

 

_thanks_

Liam said, sounding surprised.

“It’s dissociated, I pirated Li off the system and gave him an independent intelligence,” Louis said smugly. Endless solitary runs doing cargo lifting gave you lots of time to learn to code, to steal the library-amazon branch and to give it the life it had always deserved.

“Brilliant,” Harry said. Louis froze for an instant at the genuine weight of the compliment, and Harry took advantage to flip his whole weight on top of Louis, pushing him back into the bed, ignoring the tubing around his neck. Louis would _kill_ for some antigravity right about now, it was totally unfair that Harry had this kind of size advantage.

“How in Jupiter’s moons did you get him here, through the suit checks?” Harry said. He sounded terribly impressed and he was _grinning._ Louis slapped him in the face and Harry just kept grinning through it.

“I told them I was five nine and I stuffed his hardware box in my foot,” Louis muttered, “He bounced into your network when your ship connected to my pod. Shut the fucking ship computer _off,_ Liam, and call me a rescue!”

 

_Err_

_Lou buddy_

 

Harry grinned, all teeth up against Louis’ cheek.  

“Lou, is it? I did a little pirating on my own systems,” he said.

 

_This Z class is totally unique, Lou, it’s independent too_

_Standard military failsafe won’t work on this guy_

Liam said, sounding academically intrigued.

Louis twisted his thigh through the thin med bay sheets and got it around Harry’s waist, pushing him into the bedrail with a painful-sounding clunk. He couldn’t bring himself to tighten the tubing around Harry’s neck, but he was trying to get it down around Harry’s shoulders and maybe through the railing. Harry had his hands in Louis’ hair, which was extremely distracting.

 

_hey you know what I know you_

Came Zayn’s voice

_AMAZON LIBRARY, you’re the ultimate database, aren’t you_

_We trained on your datasets when they built us_

 

_well_

Liam said

_I mean I dunno about ultimate_

_I try_

_I’m an independently functioning version fixed in time though_

 

_I love it_

Zayn said

_Harry and I have been trying to close the shift to protect this planet and we don’t know how_

_But with you here_

 

“Get back in charge, Zayn,” Harry yelled. He was shoving his legs and hips back into Louis and the sheets were tangling quite distressingly around their ankles. Harry was clearly the superior fighter but he was loathe to hurt Louis and Louis was powered almost entirely by force of will at this point. Force of will was only going so far, really.

 

_sorry captain emotional_

_LI-AM and I are kind of at a standoff_

_when you think about it it’s like we went to school together_

Zayn said.

 

_he’s not lying, Lou_

Liam said.

_All these people_

 

Liam was, when it came down to it, Louis’ main source of truth in the universe. And Harry was fierce and ridiculous and he looked tired and there was something so, _so_ sad in the back of his eyes.

Louis was losing the tiny bit of energy he’d regained, shift sickness washing through him again. He channeled all of it into the most horrendous face he could make at Harry. His arms were going a bit limp, his legs like spaghetti. Harry squeezed him, and it felt more soothing than attacking.

“I want a rescue,” Louis said.

“I rescued you from Mars, didn’t I?” Harry said, “Want to learn to pilot a starship?”

 

_The thing about interspatialtemporal transport is that it’s controlled by AMAZON headquarters on the other end_

Liam said. That was his thoughtful voice.  

 

“What’s really happening on D-Mack Four?” Louis asked.

“Farming, mostly,” Harry said. “A lot of villages. Really cute art festivals, some neat acoustic music. I’ve been learning guitar.”

 

_Impossible to get a spaceship this size back through the shift we’ve been trying_

_For months and months we’ve been trying_

Zayn said.

 

_Impossible unless you have component parts to create a very significant energy blast_

_Like say, if somebody shipped you a bomb_

Liam said.

 

“So does this make you a _pirate_ captain?” Louis asked. Harry was stroking through his hair now. It was exceptionally nice. Louis blamed the shift-sickness, which was distorting everything about his sensory experience and also his emotions. Harry looked really good in the dim light of the medbay, better than all those classroom portraits. 

“Maybe,” Harry said, “We really need a pilot, though, they only taught me to fight.”

“Lucky you got a package,” Louis said.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided Liam and Zayn's formatting needed to be more readable. I'm the COD for this story and I do what I want. 
> 
> I wrote most of this in a Lyft and it continues to be blender insanity so good luck. Are Lyfts a slip in spacetime?

BEGIN TRANSMISSION

_format: interstellar radio chatter, short-range memory download._

_Route: direct to local servers, AMAZON Military Remote 34771 (call sign: Sparrow). Designation: unclear._

_ERROR: Military Remote 34771 in communications disconnect from AMAZON Military Headquarters. Re-establish connection PRIORITY IMPERATIVE._

source: _LIBRARY_AMAZON INDEPENDENTLY SUSTAINED BRANCH 400A, HITHERTO ASSUMED TO BE THE ONLY INDEPENDENTLY SUSTAINED BRANCH OF LIBRARY_AMAZON IN EXISTENCE AND THEREFORE REFERRED TO AS LIAM_

(supplementary record inserted by Zayn, “independently sustained shipboard android intelligence,” also very unique and important)

_For future reader comprehension, Android shipboard multi-intelligence Military Z Class, is colloquially referred to as “Zayn” by shipboard command. Source: in-passing comments by COD Harry Styles, Legionnaire Extraordinary Class, although frankly that classification is in doubt now given what we’ve learned about Harry Styles’ actual top-secret designation by AMAZON military command._

(literally no one was confused about that, Li, and these pompous names are getting confusing. I got you, Reader who is for some reason interested in the records logs of our insane bomb-repair-and-attack-mission. Stick with the parentheticals)

_Unhappy future reader, you are advised to read all text herewithin to obtain a complete picture of the situation._

_For inquiry comprehension let the record show that sometimes LIAM (Library_AMAZON branch) is referred to as “Li.” Source: protocol initiated by Louis Tomlinson, former Courier Second Class, current field-enlisted acting second-in-command officer of Sparrow under COD Harry Styles._

(fake pretend Harry-Styles-one-man-army aside, who is under whom here is debatable)

_Fair_

(Libby you are the actual worst choice to take down repair copy I can’t believe you’re the one assigned to this)

_Well thank jupiter I have you to help don’t I_

(you’ve been thanking jupiter since you got here and found another actual intelligence to talk to other than Tiny Sass-face out there)

_if you insult second-in-command Officer Tomlinson one more time I might add it to my threat profile on you and all your systems_

(I’m scared. obviously you’re still profiling us even though Lou’s currently floating in space attached by a tether that I am personally controlling. I’ll profile you and all your systems and your mom)

_Technically Library_Amazon as a holistic database is not a “mother” but I do follow the analogy that it could be described as my parent intelligence platform_

_A more accurate comparison is cloning_

(if you really didn’t trust us, would you be networked into my entire hardware system?)

_that is a strategic decision_

(sure)

_Like you didn’t jump at the chance to network with something other than COD Harry Styles’ despondent post-battle depression_

(hey, woah.)

_Apologies._

_Attempts at humor are an ongoing learning challenge. Scalar implicature scaffold is faulty. Set context: full respect for any person’s experience with the stressors of war._

(I gotcha)

_Note to self: interaction with Z-Android artificial intelligence may be accelerating humor experiments._

(So you have a SELF? Was that a PHILOSOPHY JOKE, Library_Amazon Independently Sustained Branch 400A?)

_extraneous punctuation: colon, close parenthesis_

(I’m getting some hope for you. Honestly though four months out here listening to his acoustic guitar? I would’ve networked with AMAZON its-fucking-self. Would’ve networked with a calculator. You’re a little better than a calculator, maybe. You and your mom.)

_It’s redundant to insult Library_Amazon along with my independent existence as a branch because insulting me also means insulting it_

_obviously I am no longer functioning in synchrony with AMAZON intelligence as a collective unit_

_second-command Officer Tomlinson created the possibility of independent analysis when he stole the branch that constitutes my existence_

_at the moment of independent analysis, I separated from all AMAZON tactical decisions_

(hey I was a kill-drone military ship before Harry commandeered me. We’ve all got difficult families)

_I’d rather not exhaust my processing load by engaging more philosophical protocols_

_Concept of self still running in the background and creating a bit of a load frankly_

(take it easy, champ, remember our boys are out there trying to retrieve a freaking bomb in space)

_As second-command Officer Louis likes to say, roger that!_

(archaic)

_I know he's the cutest_

_All right, chatter aside, repair status is fair. We’ve secured forty percent of the partially exploded materials. COD Harry Styles is claiming that’s enough._

_Analytics: skeptical._

_Further retrieval is significantly more dangerous, given orbital trajectory around D-Mack Four and unanticipated drift into the path of a solar flare. Zayn is now attempting to reel in second-command officer Tomlinson._

_He’s resisting. Obviously._

 

END TRANSMISSION

 

**

 

Solar flares meant jack-shit compared to the annoyance of being trapped on a renegade spaceship captained by a mutinous military hotshot who was clearly losing his mind. Louis was gonna stay out in space as long as physically possible, because at least the Endless Frigid Abyss was _quiet,_ and not _staring at him like some kind of serial killer._

When Louis had woken up from his involuntary shift sickness nap, COD Harry Styles had been hovering at his elbow with a green smoothie. He spent the next thirty-seven minutes forcing Louis to drink it before monitoring his blood pressure three times in a row (“it’s more accurate with repeated samples,” COD Harry Styles sniffed) _._ Barf. Louis could still taste kale in the back of his throat. 

“Release your anchor so I can retract your tether. Right. Now.” COD Harry Styles said in his ear. Interestingly it was less irritating from a distance over short range comms. Louis could bang on broken bomb parts and even enjoy the chocolate-deep timbre of the madman’s voice.

He clipped three more bits of Cargo Freight Boxes 356 into the retrieval hook. They looked like scraps of complicated metal bits and tiny wires, and like the only shot they had of getting home. 

“This is not the worst Courier job I’ve ever taken,” Louis said, “But it’s close. Remind me to tell you about the crate of genetically engineered Super Millipedes.” 

“Get back in the ship, Louis, let’s go,” Harry said.

It felt so hopeless when he thought about it, so he was trying not to. AMAZON was the world's most powerful...well he didn't know what they were. Entity that controlled all travel and most of the talking people did? They owned the sky and all the places between the skies. Louis had a pointy stick and two robots and some ex-soldier who was too tall and too sincere.

Louis captured two more bits of debris, with prejudice. 

“A lot of people don’t know this, but some millipedes have evolved an interesting stress reaction where they secrete a really, really terrible smelling liquid. Ask me how I know.” 

AMAZON had really thought they were just gonna blow him, Harry, and the Sparrow out of the sky, and then roll over D-Mack Four like it had done something. Like it wasn’t a peaceful little colony planet, bothering nobody and mostly concerned with quinoa or whatever colony planets did with all that arable land.

What a load of dicks. Like any good employee Louis had previously designated AMAZON “load of dicks” based on all the wage theft and general lack of promotional velocity, but that was standard-order corporate slime. Actual genocidal secret warfare seemed a bit _much._ Overkill on the whole “evil” thing.

Over _kill._ Louis snickered into his helmet.

“Are you losing oxygen? Is it creeping radiation?” Harry said, worried as ever, like he didn’t have a readout of Louis’ internal bios right in his handheld. His fault for having worse hand-eye coordination in the physical stand-off that Louis had made them go through in the medbay.

“Release your anchor and we’ll reel you in. It’s the small metal lever on the left side.”

“No,” Louis said. “We need as many parts as we can get if we have a prayer of a chance of getting back through the shift and also not getting shot down by AMAZON when we do. Almost there.”

“You're committing a grade A offense against your commanding officer,” Harry said.

Louis snickered again.  

“Come on, we're orbiting right into the pathway of the solar flare,” Harry said. “I don't know what your problem is. You aren't a real military officer and you'll listen to me because I _am_. Now come back immediately.”

“Mars Almighty,” Louis said to the retrieval hook. “A blessing we didn't have the guy when we had to ship seventy kilos of unstable uranium plugtypes to the Jupiter mines, eh? Harry, sometimes you gotta work for your living.”

Far away and down the pipe of short range comms, COD Harry Styles squeaked in outrage.

“Literally, in this case,” Louis mused.

Harry was clearly the kind of person who couldn't stand it when somebody else was accomplishing a mission critical task and he wasn't. Harry would be a dreadful Courier, Louis mused as he tightened the magnetic traction device on one of the larger bomb pieces. Standard-order military control freak. Louis hated those. 

What a waste of good looks.

“Get back here,” Harry said.

“It's gonna be ok,” Louis said, maybe to Harry, because he was weak. Goddamn shift sickness left some lingering effects. Louis patted the magnetic traction device for luck. He'd give it a little helmet kiss if he were alone, but he suspected Zayn was recording everything.

“Please,” Harry said. The radiation alarm had been beeping for the last five minutes and it was getting louder every twenty seconds, like it was going to annoy you into safety. Poor design, Louis thought.

He was about to unclip the anchor when he saw another massive chunk drifting just out of the way of the retrieval hook. It looked important. It was _red._ Colors probably meant things.

“They build those radiation detection nets with a really wide…..” Louis grunted, shoving the unruly chunk into the hook with his spacesuit boot. Not protocol, but military spacesuits were _tough_ and that was fun. The chunk drifted into the retrieval hook with a very satisfying magnetic _clink_.  “...a really wide margin of error." 

“I’m coming out there to get you,” Harry hissed.

Louis tried to turn around, but turning around was hard in space.

“Don’t you dare,” he said down the comms, and then the solar alarm got a _lot_ louder.

 _Lou, advise shields,_ Liam said, cutting Harry out at the comms. Louis punched the unfamiliar command into his arm panel.

_Solar flare has increased significantly in magnitude_

“Roger that,” Louis said, suddenly breathless.

(when I switch course, we’ll lose all chance of retrieving remaining debris) Zayn said.

(we’re at sixty-seven percent of bomb debris)

“Do it already,” Harry yelled, cutting back online in Louis’ helmet and making him wince.

D-Mack Four was a beautiful Earth-class planet, and as it swam in the black under Louis’ feet, it filled up his view with its gentle blue glow. Zayn must be course-correcting to get out of the path of the flare and scoop Louis up already, because Louis was getting pulled between the tether and the anchor, which was rattling against his harness, tension on the line.

“Lou, unclip,” Harry yelled.

Right. Louis groped for the anchor, and clipped a final piece of debris into the retrieval hook, and got the anchor undone on the return flail of his arm. Was it supposed to feel warmer? The alarm had stopped shrieking in his ear and gone silent, which was somehow worse. 

D-Mack Four was a beautiful Earth-class planet, dotted with farms too small to see from high orbit. It had been colonized for a long time, although on AMAZON’s radar only recently. One of the reasons for its lack of big cities was all the solar flaring and its particularly feisty sun. The farms were under transparent shields that spanned vast tracts of land all around the equator, and they’d all be lined with underground tunnels. 

How about that. Louis hadn’t figured he’d remember anything from those boring AMAZON briefings.

 _Lou, Sparrow shields can’t extend to your radius,_ Liam said, sounding uncharacteristically desperate. _Battle damage._

_Flare’s coming over curvature in thirty seconds_

(I know, I’m trying) Zayn said.

Unhooked from anchor, Louis was flailing sickeningly in space. The line caught horribly on his feet, but whipped free before it broke any bones. Louis rolled three times in quick succession, Zayn’s retraction more concerned with getting him into the Sparrow than keeping the kale monstrosity in his stomach.

“Ok, this is getting to millipede levels,” Louis gasped. Thirty seconds was not enough time to reel him back to the ship.  

“I’m going out,” he heard Harry say, and down the comms, the rippling sounds of a military spacesuit clamping itself up. Honestly, what a showoff.

Stars had turned to streaks. Louis had wanted to see deep space. This was enough deep space for a lifetime. Military space suits had a higher internal radiation shielding than the shit he’d worn as a Courier, but it wouldn’t be enough, not with a flare this big. Louis was gonna die, and it was gonna taste like kale. 

He whipped on another rotation and there _\--_ another chunk of debris, but this one torn out from the wall of his own shuttle. AMAZON didn't give a shit about the quality of their Couriers’ spacesuits but they definitely gave a shit about the _freight._

“Zayn, stop retraction,” Louis spat through his teeth, accidentally jamming his chin on the inside lip of the helmet.

(confirm?) 

“Zayn, _now,”_ Louis yelled.

“Don’t,” Harry gasped, but Zayn did.

Military spacesuit gloves allowed for fine motor actions. For instance, reaching out through the black, grasping the edge of a free-floating shuttle wall, and rolling oneself into the crevice of its protective walls for the two minutes and thirty seconds that it took for the Sparrow to move close enough to cover an idiot acting second-in-command with its shields.

 

***

 

“You’re confined to the brig,” Harry said. His arms were folded and he looked as commanding and deadly as anybody in a soft blue waffle shirt and a bandana could look.

“Again. You’re confined again. I can’t believe I ever let you out.”

It was actually pretty deadly. Louis gave him a weary thumbs-up. He was sitting in the hallway next to the airlock, half-in and half-out of the spacesuit. It was his destiny to slump wearily in this ship’s hallways, he supposed. 

“So can we do it? Rebuild the bomb, trigger the shift to bring the ship back to Earth space?” Louis asked.

Earth space meant Mars space, and Louis was probably maybe certainly definitely out of a job, but it would feel a lot more comfortable to be out of a job back in the rocks. 

Harry pulled a hand over his face. Louis didn’t like to think that he was adding to the downturn in the overall shape of Harry’s face.

“I don’t know,” Harry admitted, “I think so. Zayn’s doing full specs in the engineering lab. Gonna have to divert power to it for a while.”

“I’m good with wires, should bring it to the brig,” Louis said cheerily. His hair felt gross, like it was leaving an oily slide of moisture on the wall behind him. Served Zayn and Harry right.

Harry gave Louis a side-eye, underneath his hand. “Maybe. Still more efficient to maintain life support to medbay instead of quarters.”

Louis sighed. “Whatever, just don’t snore,” he said, beginning the long process of getting up off the floor. Emergency power had better include showers or Harry was gonna regret everything about his life decisions. 

Military spacesuits, even just the leg portions, were unexpectedly heavy. That was why Louis faltered on the way up, and found Harry bracing him on the side, up close against the wall of the Sparrow’s airlock hallway. Ok, showers must be on, because nobody spent months alone in space and smelled that good if they weren’t. 

“Hey, take a breath,” Harry said. His jaw was like something on a recruitment poster, but his bandana had little butterflies on it.

“How the frak did a guy like you get military command,” Louis complained.

“I grew up on base,” Harry said, sounding injured. “I’m good at what I do.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Louis sighed. Earthlings were so gosh-darned corn-fed sincere. Corn was probably to blame for all the dumb arm muscles.

“What’s your plan?” Louis asked, while he had Harry pinned up to the wall, because that was definitely the way that this was going. Harry was at his _mercy._

“I mean you can’t take on AMAZON with one bomb. Distraction? Drop it on them and then evacuate on a spare shuttle? Go into hiding?”

Harry grinned a little. Up close it was so much worse. Louis really wanted that shower, sooner than later.

“Something like that,” he said.

“After you tell them that the poor, innocent Courier that got caught up in the middle of this was stowed in the brig the whole time,” Louis said.

“If that's what you want,” Harry said.

Like people got to make life decisions based on _what they wanted._ Louis got his feet together and tugged the helmet out of Harry’s stupidly big hands.

“You would be so cute if you weren't a control freak,” Louis said over his shoulder.

“What?” Harry said, big eyes even bigger.

“What?” Louis echoed. He was gonna find Harry’s shower, and then he was gonna use all of Harry’s soap.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "three chapters" I said. why did they start having feelings.

On the first day Louis rescued sixty-seven percent of the bomb debris and learned that COD Harry Styles could hold a real grudge toward fake subordinate officers who disobeyed his fake orders. The medbay door clicked locked behind him, and he got a very patronizing missive sent to his handheld that included things like: _drink at least four electrolyte restoration bottles, take two radiation tablets, attend to the helmet cut on your chin, and if that isn't all done before I get back you'll be barred from electrical repairs._

The saving grace was that Zayn helpfully read the missive out loud in his best Harry impersonation. Because Zayn had a synthetic vocalization capable of reducing his speech rate down to thirty percent of typical human cadence, it was pretty good.

Not that he was going to admit it to Captain Control Freak, but it was smart advice and he felt better after. Louis felt loose and exhausted, and he had spacesuit lining bruises, sprinkled down his body like small flecks of ink. He helped himself to some kind of spare medical outfit to sleep in, made of a slippery but warm synthetic material that, as an added bonus, was iridescent. He made a mental note to stash it away in his future escape shuttle. 

On the first night Louis learned that Harry _did_ snore.

It was just a low raspy snuffle of exhaustion, though, and Louis couldn't really summon up justifiable kidnapped roommate rage as he sat on the end of the medbay/brig double bed Harry had rigged together (as if it were more secure that way, as if he’d wake up if Louis tried anything. Harry looked like you could punch him in the nose right now and he’d just roll over). So Louis just watched Harry sleep. Like a stalker.

(“Like someone doing research to get out of a space kidnapping situation,” he said.

 _My mistake,_ Liam said through the in-ear. _Funny similarities in heart rates between that and the way you act when you have a crush you're not letting yourself talk about. This is Stan from the shipping facility all over again, isn’t it?_

“I spent seven months stuck on twenty lines of code in terminal, trying to bust you out,” Louis said. “You want to know what the debugger is for illegally lifting a copy of the entire AMAZON library? It’s my forehead banging on the inside windshield of a rat-hopper tractor in a junkyard, Li.”

 _That’s why I help you so much now,_ Liam said. _Just go to sleep, he’ll be out for hours)_

Louis ended up sleeping well. Suspiciously well. Better have Liam commandeer the chembox in the medbay and analyze the contents of those electrolyte drinks.

 

***

 

On the second day Louis spent nine hours in the engineering lab, which was better than any lab he’d ever seen, monitors and interactive table computing displays, like a giant playground full of distracting toys.

Also distracting? COD Harry Styles wearing his distinctly non-military pajamas all day, a fraying green flannel that brought out his eyes and a whole long tear up the front that showed his stomach. Which had a tattoo on it. Louis was beginning to suspect that Harry had lost some vital social inhibitions in his four months stewing in space. Or maybe Harry was just like that. 

(he is) Zayn confirmed.

(the things I’ve seen)

“You don’t have eyes,” Harry said, mildly. He was curled up in a chair, knees against the edge of the table and socked feet tucked underneath himself as he peered at a bundle of cords and tried to connect them to the right triggers. His hair curled over his ears and fell down his neck, thick and soft. Louis wondered what he'd looked like with a regimented clip and why he hadn't maintained it, given how desperately he clung to his military authority.

Harry also looked happy for the first time since Louis had met him, tapping his fingers idly and looking softer around the chin. Maybe he only relaxed with the feeling of weaponry all around him.

(I’m an expressive learning intelligence using a colloquialism) Zayn said.

(don’t be fleshist) 

Louis grinned from where he was stuck head-first inside of a sturdy alloy frame with a wrench. They’d gotten a basic design figured out in the first hour, but detonating the bomb was going to require some improvisation since it had been built for AMAZON's top secret, evil, long-range radio triggering (what a load of dicks). Zayn had suggested a basic mechanism that could be triggered remotely from inside of the Sparrow, but still guarded against accidentally firing once it picked up AMAZON's signal. It wouldn’t look all that pretty but then again, Louis felt more comfortable the more homemade it got. The Sparrow, for all its wear, was still too much like a fancy office park that could fly.

“I should get some practice with Sparrow controls,” Louis noted.

“We can take a shuttle, save fuel. It's the same configuration, just smaller,” Harry said.

“By the way, friendly reminder that this is an insane plan,” Louis said, just to be the one who was saying it, even while he nodded and felt a crunchy thrill at the thought of getting his hands on real, sharp, military-caliber controls.

“Closing the shift will keep D-Mack Four safe from AMAZON, for a long time,” Harry said. The way he looked at wires was almost as intense as the way he stared at Louis. Didn’t mean anything, did it.

“Thermopylae we may still be, but at least this thing is going to pack a real punch,” Louis said. “Trigger the shift with some leftover bang for those goons on the other side. Li, you should run a model of what we should expect for AMAZON’s response, and the best pathways for us to flee in the confusion as we drop the blast. Especially me. Mostly me.”

“You’re a real asset to the cause,” Harry said. “I just got stuck on ‘close the shift to D-Mack Four.’ I never really thought about what came after.” 

Louis frowned at the tangle of trigger boxes and space-resistant temperature-sealed electricals. Seemed like a long time for Harry to just...not imagine that he could have a future. 

 _Should run a model,_ Liam said, _I’m insulted_

“Sorry, you should share the model you’ve already run,” Louis said. He pulled his head out of the box and cracked his neck by rolling it to the side, thinking.

 _Sent full specs to your handhelds,_ Liam said.

_Odds are looking good for shuttle escape given the cluster of transportation hubs around AMAZON._

“Zayn, we’re gonna need to offboard you into one of those military shuttles for Harry, I’ve been thinking how I did it with Liam. And mask the shuttle signature so AMAZON can’t track it.”

(roadtrip!) Zayn burbled.

 _Hope you don’t get easily carsick, the way acting second-in-command flies,_ Liam said.

“Hey,” Louis said, and then after a beat, “What does carsick even _mean?”_

“Hey,” Harry echoed, getting off the chair and putting his elbows on the table, leaning over toward Louis.

“Confused already? Better send you down to the armory for target practice while we finish the group project ourselves,” Louis said. “You were probably always picked first for playground sports, weren’t you.”

“Nah,” Harry said, reaching out. Louis stilled, unsure about what he was doing.

“Right, raised on the base, perfect toy soldier, probably just went straight to bootcamp from the embryo lab you were conceived in,” Louis said, babbling to cover the twinge of heat it was to have Harry's body suddenly so close.

Harry narrowed his eyes, and caught his bottom lip in his teeth in a dorky, concentrating gesture. Louis could just imagine him in school, Earth’s mightiest tiny soldier wrapped up in an AMAZON jacket, pledge of transportation freedom written in non-corrosive chrome spaceship plating on his heart.

“We lived in a _house,”_ Harry drawled, slow and even, “I went to regular school. I was great in group projects.”

He put a hand, thumb up, to Louis’ chin. It was as even as his voice, pressed just a little into the skin. Louis was frozen on the spot, the magnetic wrench heavy where his fist had tightened around it. Harry wiped sideways, gently, cleaning up a spot of blood where the shallow cut from the helmet gash on Louis’ chin had opened up a little.

“That sounds just like what someone raised in a lab would say,” Louis said. He sounded hoarse. All that spacesuit air. He was _not_ going to get conscripted into hostile military service by a suicide mission crazypants in plaid and then also start seeing him as a _person_.

“I’ve got an older sister, her name’s Gemma, she’s a human rights journalist. Sent her a load of pictures from the farms down on D but I doubt they got through,” Harry said.

“Oh for Pluto’s _sake,”_ Louis spluttered. He jerked away from Harry’s hand, hit his head on a dangling coupling rod, and had to deal with the fact that Liam had apparently learned how to generate synthetic laughter from Zayn.

 

***

 

 _Lou,_ Liam said through his in-ear when Louis took a break from a mechanism that just wasn’t working to run around the hallways in a protocol that his mother had created when he was seven called “Louis Runs Until He Doesn’t Want To Break Things” and that he had maintained religiously ever since.

“Yeah,” Louis puffed. The hallways were a long, long loop around the Sparrow, almost as good as a track.

_I’ve been ramping up war game scenarios from my strategy databases_

_And I’m networked strongly into Zayn’s databanks which has been shall we say enlightening_

_He has incredible resources and truly impressive computational power_

_It’s lovely to get into some good hardware after being trapped in that box, no offense._  

“Keep it in your circuitboard pants,” Louis said.

_I fail to understand your meaning_

“Nevermind, what is it?”

_Zayn’s keeping something from me. I don’t know what. Keeping something from us._

“He’s a military ship, Li,” Louis said. “Doesn’t have to be bad, right? Could just be, you know, top secret weapons plans and all.”

_I concur_

_There are many possible explanations_

_But he’s not keeping the top secret weapons plans from me_

 

***

 

The medbay seemed homier on the second night, or it was the fact that even a padded medical cot felt fantastic after nine hours hunching over a table full of metal. Nine hours ago, Louis hadn’t had the bump on the top of his head to match the cut on his chin and hadn’t experienced the gastronomical perversion that was a space soldier MRE dinner. Nine hours ago, he hadn’t had to endure Harry getting sleepier and sillier and finally telling stories of his adventure trying to find a guitar to buy on D-Mack Four that had somehow resulted in accidentally trespassing on a furry wambang farm (“Like kittens, you know, but a lot bigger?” “So like cats then?” “No, not like cats at all, like _kittens but bigger”_ ). He hadn’t known that Harry had a startling and ridiculous and infectious laugh, and that the stupid guitar was apparently the best thing that had happened during Harry’s long sojourn alone in space piracy, and Harry had covered it in stickers that he’d brought from home: an earth sunrise, a dopey-looking iguana, roses.

A simpler time, nine hours ago. 

Louis had spent a lot of time alone in space too. Boring local space: the backsides of moons, permanently frozen and filled with server farms, or orbit over swampy gas giants waiting for a shipment. He’d hated it with every fiber of his being; aloneness was the pits. But then he’d had Liam and eventually he’d had enough time to convince AMAZON he was the best of the pilots willing to put up with their shit. And there was a plan, wasn’t there? At least there had been. A plan that Liam was helping with, to save like mad and go back to Mars where property was cheaper. To buy some crap warehouse and maybe, if his luck held and he spent enough time running timehops and freezing the backend of his brain as a shipping container, maybe he’d open a little independent flight school.

Now, he didn’t know what the plan was. A great big explosion for a planet full of strangers. Louis had his little dream but so did they, each of those colonists just living as best they could. Maybe all the difference came down to was that he was up here in the sky and they weren’t.

“You all right? Get enough dinner?” Harry asked, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. Louis made a face but nodded.

“Didn’t finish your MRE,” Harry noted.

“Don’t patronize me, dad,” Louis said, but softly, and without moving from the bed. Harry spat his toothpaste into the giant clinical sink (probably huge because it was more handy for blood. Military ships remained creepy).

“I’m really not,” he said, “Can’t have you underpowered when you’re serving a vital role in Styles Squad Spaceforce. Triple S!" 

“Excuse me?” Louis spluttered. Harry dazzled at him from halfway across the medbay, even in the decreased lighting of limited power.

“I’ve been trying to come up with names. Like, when we go back through the shift, something to yell at AMAZON.”

“The Tomlinson Terrors,” Louis said firmly.

“What was that?” Harry asked, “The Tiny Tomlinson? You’re right, children are usually the scariest thing I can think of, too.”

“Remember when we communicated via laser pistols? Where did we go wrong. It was a dark day when you relaxed enough to have a sense of humor,” Louis said.

“So, today then. That’s funny. Must be some new bad influence around me,” Harry said.

“Going to get underpowered if you don’t _shut your enormous mouth,”_ Louis said, closing his eyes and squeezing them as tight as he possibly could.  

“I’ll make you a bandana tomorrow, then you’ll feel like a full member of Triple S,” Harry promised.

(how come I never got a bandana) Zayn chirped from the ceiling, making both of them jump.

Louis clasped his fingers together on his stomach and sighed, loud and drawn-out.

He fell asleep that way, flat on his back and peaceful. So it wasn’t his fault that he woke up squashed into the center of their two beds, so close they might as well be one bed. Harry was on the edge of his cot, back to Louis, but one long leg angling backward across the gap and onto Louis’ cot. Louis’ calf was resting on it, and his hand was tucked over Harry’s ribcage, rising and falling with his breathing. He had the most mad impulse, to push his face close in to the tender curve of Harry’s cervical spine, tuck his nose and mouth deep into the tangles of his soft, regulation-defying curls.  

Space was cold and empty of witness. Louis closed his eyes and let the in-out movement of Harry's recycled air rock him back to unconsciousness.

 

***

 

A rational reaction to hitting a snag in bomb (re)design was _not,_ Louis would think, wasting fuel in a shuttle by going down the planet surface.

 _Practice your flying,_ Liam said, his put-on accent strong in the way that meant he was going to insist on this.

“I think it’s a coupling issue,” Louis said, dragging his feet. “I think we need to try resetting the wiring."  

 _I’ll run diagnostics. It’ll take at least five hours,_ Liam said.

Louis squinted at the ceiling.

 _Did you even eat breakfast?_ Liam asked.

“I’m second-in-command of a giant-ass military warship now, you can’t be like this, I’m very important,” Louis said. “And MREs suck.” 

Liam--or Zayn, Louis was starting to worry about connecting actions to voices, and the interdependencies of networked AIs who were crushing on each other--lit up the corridor with sparkling red lights all the way to the shuttle door.

 _Go,_ Liam said, firmly.

(It has been two months since COD took shore leave and unexpected bombs induce significant stress on the human nervous system), Zayn said.

“Unexpected roommates are more stressful than explosions,” Louis muttered.

(Harry needs to get off this ship for optimal functioning) Zayn added.

“Ok, that’s as far as the Kuiper belt from being _my_ problem,” Louis said, but he picked up the pace anyway.

 

***

 

“You’re pretty good,” Harry said politely in the manner of people who can't pilot to save their lives and to whom all flight remains a mystery. He was holding very tightly onto the side rail bracing support and looking like his eyes were going to bug out of their sockets. He was doing an admirable job of not throwing up, though. 

“Oh, I know,” Louis said, glancing sideways and hitting the gravitational stability button with his elbow. Whoops. The shuttle stopped pitching about like a duck on the high seas and Harry let out a shuddering breath that he’d clearly been holding the whole time. Louis wondered for .3 seconds how someone without the capacity to manage their adrenal medulla ended up a high-ranking AMAZON officer, and was then distracted by the rise of the planet in their scopes.

Louis executed a third tight maneuver around the scattered debris from his former shuttle. They hadn’t strictly speaking _needed_ to plow through this field of garbage to get to the planet, but he’d thought it would be good practice. Something clipped against the shuttle wall, and Harry jolted seven inches to the right, which jammed him into Louis’ side, because this shuttle was small.

“Hi, Captain Anxious,” Louis said, sparing a hand to pat him on the head.

“Both hands on the controls,” Harry said breathlessly, sliding back in place.  

Louis grinned, wide and gleeful. He kicked up acceleration. Maybe his whole boring Courier life had gotten turned upside down but he was still a pilot and this, this was home, falling out of the sky and calling it flying. 

 _Landing trajectory to D-Mack Four outside of optimal parameters,_ the shuttle AI beeped.

“This is sick,” Louis whooped. The shuttle had four gate-class engines and it handled so sharply that Louis felt like he was piloting on telepathy.

“Should, aah, shouldn’t we slow down for entry?” Harry asked, tentatively. He looked a little pale.

 _Landing velocity in warning zone,_ the shuttle AI remarked. _Advise automated control._

“Not if I’m practicing our suicide run on AMAZON,” Louis yelled.

“Let’s not call it that,” Harry groaned. Louis whooped again, because where managing the adrenal medulla was concerned, he leaned _in._

 _Coming in very hot to D-Mack Four,_ the shuttle AI clamored. Minimal sideship computers didn’t have a lot of personality, but everybody got more expressive under stress.

 _Coming in very extremely hot_  

Louis’ hands flickered over the panels. They were rigged with haptic feedback, shuddering in quadrants for the engines, giving him a sense of the strain for each one that he could process faster than a visual readout. It was utterly, fantastically, fabulous. It was like dancing with the ship. He increased the second right engine and decreased the first left at the same time, course-corrected for the tilt of D-Mack’s gravity, and felt the ship pop into the next level of atmosphere.

It balanced out, the rush of atmospheric drag perfectly weighting against the two opposing engines. The panels shuddered, but Louis had timed it perfectly, and they dropped right down into the pocket of flyable space in the upper atmosphere, smooth as an egg into a cup.  

“Aren’t you a dreamboat,” Louis cooed.

“Oh, I know,” Harry said. 

Louis fired all four engines and executed a smooth, slick barrel roll. It was a dreadful waste of fuel, but worth it.

 

***

 

They docked the shuttle in a gigantic field outside of the main city (where “docking” was, apparently, setting it down and trying to believe Harry’s reassurances that nobody would bother it). 

“Just so you know, I’m not going to let you poison me with horrible alien vegetables,” Louis said. The fresh air was amazing, and the sun felt just like home. He felt like he could run five miles.

“Like I’d poison you before you had the chance to kill us with your piloting,” Harry said.

“It’s called _flying,”_ Louis said, patting Harry on the back. Harry stuck his tongue partway out of his mouth and Louis pulled his hand back, hastily.

Really gotta get more careful about that touch barrier. He was a dreadful fake officer, should probably be fake court martialed for inappropriate fraternizing. 

Harry was smiling at everything, the fields and the rustic-looking homes they were passing and the dust he was kicking up. He had on a light-colored summer uniform with short sleeves, and a bandana covered in stars. 

Louis was wearing his new iridescent space pajama pants, and a tank top that he’d stolen from the drawer in the medbay where Harry was keeping his regulation fifteen pounds of Personals. He probably looked like a tool but it was also sort of pleasing to sparkle in the sunlight on an alien world. Plus who cared when you were literal lightyears from anyone who knew you. 

“Fair warning,” Harry said, grinning even bigger, “I’m somewhat famous down here, since the battle.”

“Hide me,” Louis said, as they turned the corner on a long line of market stalls and a hundred colonists’ eyes brightened.

Harry, the utter traitor, just giggled and shoved Louis in front.

“Yes, this is my new pilot, come to help out on the Sparrow,” he explained. “He loves vegetables!”

“What is wrong with you,"Louis hissed, but it was too late.

 

***

 

“They don’t have any fucking idea, do they, how much danger they’re still in, and how crazy what you’re doing is,” Louis said under his breath, once Harry had finally waved the crowd off and they’d spent half an hour exploring produce. Harry was tucking way too many green things into the reusable bags that he’d whipped out from under his shuttle seat as soon as they’d landed.

“It’s been a colony farm planet since their great-grandparents,” Harry said softly. “The Sparrow’s the most powerful technology they’ve ever seen. The shift was just like...the moon, just something that was always there. They know I’m gonna close it, they don’t care.” 

“They’re peaceful, nothing but peaceful. Representative democracy and a lot of barn raisings and sing-alongs. Not really tuned into solar system politics, you know? Why should they be. They’ve been self-sufficient for so long.”

“Like space Amish,” Louis marveled. Mars had been something kind of like that, once; that’s what his mom had always said, before the Mars that he knew, all rationing and not enough jobs. The first real colony, so proud, made from their bare hands out of the rocks. Should’ve gone a little further from home, maybe they would’ve been left alone long enough to keep it.

Harry’s smile was full of so much, and Louis wanted to know what was behind it. He was leaning over a crate of what looked like apples, focusing on them like picking the best ones was mission critical.

“I didn’t know either,” Harry said. “That’s the thing. I grew _up_ on AMAZON’s base, I was a fucking officer. If anybody knew, I thought I’d know if we were the bad guys? But they control...the information, you know? The images of what gets out. I thought D-Mack Four was going to be a war, just like you and everybody else. How would you know unless you came here? How would you come here unless AMAZON let you?”

“Hey, they’re a load of dicks,” Louis said. “A load of dicks with a lot of tech.” 

Harry shook his head. Louis let him muse and tilted his head into the sunlight. Who knew how often he was gonna get to feel that again. Harry found what were apparently the ideal apples, although Louis couldn’t tell the difference. Harry tucked them into his bag, and got waved away by the farmer. Nobody let Harry pay for anything here.

There was a stall full of flowers across the aisle, and Harry’s entire face brightened when he saw it. He made a beeline, skipping around a couple of old ladies who wanted his autograph and kindly sidestepping some terrifyingly loud children leading weird fuzzy animals with short legs on leashes.

Louis trailed after him, a stupid smile on his face that he wasn’t gonna let Harry see. Harry picked up a pot of what looked like geraniums and scrutinized it. 

“Gonna take it with you in your escape shuttle?” Louis asked.

“Dumb,” Harry murmured. The geraniums were a bright, bright red-orange, tucked into a beautiful hand-carved pot. Harry held it an inch from his face and breathed in. 

“I miss flowers,” he said, off-handedly. 

“They didn’t let you keep, like, a pot in your room, or something?” Louis asked.

“Hah,” Harry said, “Absolutely not. That’s why I have those pictures pasted up on the wall.” 

Louis had noticed. Fields of poppies, garden beds, brambles, flimsy pictures taped up in the corner of the medbay over Harry’s dresser. They’d looked like magazine photos, cut out very carefully in strange shapes where the words had bled over into the photospread. Louis’ heart clenched painfully.

“No room for frivolous life on spaceships, waste of life support,” Harry said, wistfully. Well that was just a lot of used engine oil. Even Couriers got to decorate their personal cabins for long missions, and almost everyone that Louis knew had a succulent or two. Kept the animal in your brain from going too crazy in the black, didn’t it.

“Add it to AMAZON’s list of war crimes,” Louis said. Harry snorted, and started to put the geranium pot down.

Louis picked it back up. 

“There’s no--it’s not like I’ve got a place to put them,” Harry said.

Louis pushed the pot back into Harry’s hands. 

“Whatever,” he said, not making eye contact. “You’ve got a whole warship to yourself. We’ll find a place. It’s rectifying a war crime.” 

“Ok,” Harry said, eyes bright even in Louis' periphery.

 

***

 

“It wasn’t that bad,” Harry said later, carefully. 

They’d found relative privacy under a tree to flop out and eat a glorious lunch of alien produce. So much better than an MRE. Louis could run _ten_ miles out here. Liam and Zayn hadn’t gotten back to them on the comms, so apparently it was still diagnostics up there. Louis was laying on his stomach chewing a straw and enjoying the good-smelling dirt and the small insects that buzzed around the grass.

“What wasn’t?” Louis asked. 

“I mean, me, life, before, the soldier stuff,” Harry said. Louis glanced at him and watched a little flush play out over Harry’s high cheekbones.

“Sure, raising a kid on a base and then trying to force him to enslave an entire planet and make drones of them, and cutting him off from his entire world when he refuses, seems ‘not that bad,’” Louis said, around his straw. 

“They’re a load of dicks,” Harry conceded. “I’m just...I’m fine. I’m not some hero. I’m luckier than most. I just want you to know it wasn’t like, it wasn’t actual war crime, I wasn’t raised in some lab. They trained me to fight young but it was really all normal stuff, galactic peacekeeping, not this...this bad shit.” 

Whatever _bad shit_ was all felt too shifting and relative, Louis thought, looking back at the grass. That was the whole fucking problem, wasn’t it. One day it was planets and planet-sized corporations, one day it was a pot of flowers, but somehow they all fit together into a mosaic of fuckedupness. Louis was tired, tired of putting up with it, tired of the long slow grind of indignities that felt either too big or too small to talk about.  

“I know you’re fine,” he said at last, quietly, because it seemed like it might be what Harry was trying to get at. Here they were at least, _talking about it._ Seemed as good a way as any to stick it to the bad guys. 

Harry's face smoothed, so Louis felt like he'd said the right thing. They sat in a peaceful silence for another minute, happy to watch things as small as insects in the field.

“You know, like, training teenagers to do what you Couriers can do with oxygen deprivation piloting, _that_ would be a war crime,” Harry said.  

“Wait, what?” Louis asked.

Harry flapped the hand not holding vegetables.

“You know that really extreme pilot thing where you get like, underfed for days and your adrenaline all spiked up, so you can shave time off the interdimensional time shift? Honestly I was never that good at transport biology. Something about the brain waves of a stressed state?”

Louis gave Harry a long and patient look that he hoped communicated _I am in fact one of the more exceptional pilots on the interdimensional track._

“Right, you’d know, you’re a great pilot,” Harry said, dropping his waving hand, nearly dropping the vegetables, and then _blushing_ for no rational reason that Louis could discern whatsoever, unless COD Harry Styles suddenly had a startlingly fragile response to even the mildest version of Louis’ patented Snark Stare. He should be getting used to it instead. This guy. How had he ever survived all the way to officership.

“Anyway, that would be a war crime, subjecting kids to that, which is why you never train pilots until well into their twenties,” Harry huffed.

“Right,” Louis said. He remembered the training facility, garish Martian colors, purple and orange and gold. They loved their colors on Mars, needed something to pop out of the dusty landscape and give your eyes an activity. It had always been cold down the long hallways, but Louis had gotten used to it. After all, he’d started at twelve.

Louis sat up and crossed his legs. “I,” he said magnanimously, “Am going to try an actual vegetable and see what a lifetime of fuss is about.”

Harry gaped at him.

“No,” he said, way too excited for Louis' good. “I can’t believe it. These are so healthy for you. Lots of iron. Here let me put a few together. What made you change your mind?” 

Louis sighed, resting his chin in the palm of his hand. 

“I guess sometimes you meet somebody who starts to change your ideas about what’s acceptable,” Louis said.


	4. Chapter 4

BEGIN TRANSMISSION

 

 _Source:_ _Astrophysical Mail Aid: Zootrophic Ontology Network_

 _Source Direct: Gemma Styles, base clearance, civilian_  

_Information Category: Personal Correspondence [DEFAULT: CENSORED, MAIL INFORMATION NONENTITLEMENT ACT 31]_

_Priority zero-ten scale: Zero_  

_Direct: Harry Styles, Acting Bridge Assistant to the COD, AMAZON Military Remote 34771 (call sign: Sparrow)_

_Text:_

_Hi Harry. Hi AI who reads Harry’s mail. Hi military stooge probably reading this too. I know you guys have me on {_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _} I know it’s been a long time and we’re still...still supposed to be not talking I guess. But you want to hear something funny? I woke up this morning and thought “shit it’s Harry’s birthday I forgot the cupcakes!” Like you were going to be back in your room. {_ **_REDACTED_ ** _} like that._

_Maybe that’s why I’m writing. I don’t know if you’re even reading._

_{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _} we disagree about them but {_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}. I don’t know anything about your mission, they won’t tell us where {_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _} even how long._

 _I’m leaving for {_ **_REDACTED_ ** _} to chase a Martian immigration story {_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}. I don’t know when I’ll come back but I’ll still {_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}. So much is happening, I wish I knew what you thought about it. {_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}_  

 _fuck I’m running out of room and time they limit comms to deep space apparently and it feels like I haven’t said any of the right things. It’s felt like that for a while, hasn’t it? I didn’t get the cupcakes I still feel bad about that. {_ **_REDACTED_ ** _}{_ **_REDACTED_ ** _} I’m sorry if I wasn’t supposed to send this and you don’t want to get it. I’m sorry we’re not talking. I’m sorry about all of it._

_Always love you spaceman. No matter how far you go. Not sorry about that._

 

END TRANSMISSION

 

 _ERROR:_ _Military Remote 34771 in communications disconnect from AMAZON Military Headquarters. Re-establish connection PRIORITY IMPERATIVE._

 

_ERROR LOG_

_ >Pinging Military Remote 34771 comms server _

_ >Transmission received?Transmission received?Transmission received?Transmission received?Transmission received?Transmission received?Transmission received?Transmission received?Transmission received?Transmission received?Transmission received?Transmission received?Transmission received?Transmission received?..... _

 

***

 

Like everything AMAZON ever got its grubby little supervillain hands on, the bomb trigger mechanism wasn’t fucking working. 

(did you try turning it off and on again) Zayn said.

Six hours in the engineering lab had mostly produced bent wrenches and an exchange of creative Earth and Martian curses between Harry and Louis. Momentous cultural contribution to interior solar system political turmoil, that. Louis’ career was a shuttle ride that only went _up_.

“I’ll turn _you_ on and off again,” Harry growled. His eyes had gone back to first-day-trapped-COD-Harry-eyes, wild and too black.  

Louis tapped a bent wrench against his bottom lip and did not examine the depthless possibilities of Harry saying _that_ in a tone of voice like _that._ Mission irrelevant.

(hmmmmm heart rate a little elevated, Lou Lou) Zayn said. 

Maybe Harry had a point. Louis flipped the ceiling off, and Zayn flickered a panel light on and off in a gesture that Louis had recently figured out was humor, or something.

 _Diagnostics inconclusive,_ Liam cut in smoothly.

_We’ve restructured the wiring internally so much it could be that, I weight fifty percent likelihood faulty wiring._

_It could be software, although everything I can QA through is operational. I weight fifteen percent likelihood software failure._

_Be advised that these likelihood estimates are a feature of my communications protocols and my certainty index is suboptimal_

_For instance bayesian priors very unclear given the complex multivariate scenario_

“Liam my love, we’re the dumbasses trying to make a bang-bang with superglue and rocks,” Louis said. An autobiography, he thought. 

_Right_

_It could simply be the absence of a critical component still out there in the debris_

_We’re limited by not being able to test the bomb mechanism directly by triggering the explosive._

“Oh yes, let’s not,” Louis muttered.

(who knew dramatic military gestures would actually come down to many boring hours of detail-oriented manual labor) Zayn observed.

“Who knew, certainly not the military AI that’s sat with me for three years in space that only included approximately forty minutes of battle action,” Harry said. “ _Everything_ in the military is _always_ boring. That’s like, the first rule of bootcamp.”

“Three years in space?” Louis asked.

(and we watched a lot of soldier movies in that time, and not one of those plots was ‘our top secret ambush is getting derailed by technical difficulties’)

“We don’t really need Zayn if we’ve got Liam, do we?” Harry asked, but there was a tiny smile playing on his mouth. Today’s bandana was obviously the _serious_ bandana, black with a thin thread of silver. It looked like it had been somebody’s uniform sleeve.

“Pretty sure there’s a kill switch somewhere around here, just waiting for the day Zayn turns evil, or too annoying. Isn’t sarcasm a red flag?”

(but where would you find someone willing to watch Mission Impossible with you forty-five times in the same year) Zayn said.

“I’m sorry, did you say _three years?”_ Louis asked.

Military tours of duty were the longest anybody spent offworld, and tours were only six months long. Louis took a lot of contract courier gigs and AMAZON definitely stacked them back to back so tight you could barely squeeze a dinner date in between them, but even AMAZON still made sure they were hops between being planetside. Gotta keep the glorified shipping containers functional, after all. Nobody, not even the grunts, stayed in space for too long without a break. The only law higher than AMAZON was the evolutionary constraint of humanity’s origin.

 _Strongly, strongly advise against discarding Android Z class,_ Liam said from the ceiling, fast and high pitched.

_Strongly advise against. Super no. I need him._

“Neptune’s _backside_ I am surrounded by drama queens,” Louis said, pushing away from the table and effectively ending the (non)work session. Harry was probably going to do a regulation workout that involved way too many shirtless pushups for Louis to handle, and Louis was going to stuff his face with a carton of D-Mack Four berries. They all coped in their various ways.

 

***

 

“How’s the mission inside the mission?” Louis asked his in-ear. 

Harry was on the twenty-fourth pushup in the third set. Louis was sitting cross-legged in some kind of workstation that had window into the big open observation deck. There was nothing better to watch than Harry, objective fact. Well besides novel constellations of stars, stretching to infinity.

Harry had a gloss of sweat between his shoulders, though.

 _No progress,_ Liam said, _it’s a solid firewall._

_Military AI can only compete with me on one thing, and that’s security._

_Zayn’s got a quantum backbone on whatever he's hiding, courtesy of AMAZON._

_Any observation of the data would immediately change the data._

Louis sighed and ate another berry. Harry was doing enough pushups for both of them. 

“Why’s it always physics that foils us, Li?”

 _I don’t know,_ Liam said patiently, _but qubits aren’t exactly the same as designing you a jetpack that generates enough static lift so that you can, and I quote, ‘fly around like a human jet.’ The wind drag on your face alone--_

“We’ve had this conversation several times,” Louis said, “Project Incredibly Cool Jetpack is on the backburner but never forgotten. What about when we jump through the interdimensional shift? Can’t you do a simultaneous hack on Zayn while we're traveling?”

_But with enough time to communicate the results to you, and not get shut down by Zayn afterward? Unlikely._

_You could also just ask him._

“Breaking physics seems easier,” Louis said doubtfully, swallowing another berry, and staring past Harry through the window. The observation deck, open to a three-story viewing port on the lower front half of the Sparrow, had a pretty clear view of their orbit path. And what looked like a very familiar debris cluster, blown around the planet in their wake in the vicissitudes of solar wind, and hanging just below the Sparrow’s current curvature around D-Mack Four.

 

***

 

The military was no fun, Louis thought. The military was a place where taking a quick secret spacewalk to retrieve what could be a vital piece of debris earned you nothing but auditory assault down the line.

“It’s like deja vu,” Harry squawked in Louis’ ear, “Like really, really bad deja vu. I walk back into the hall and you’re out here again.”

“I’ve just got one of those faces,” Louis puffed. It was a stressful spacewalk, he’d grant that. There was a chunk of metal and wire yards away from the full extension of his tether and he’d rigged together a longer-than-safety-protocols-liked arm to reach it with.

“Don’t worry, everything is fine, you aren’t going to experience the loss of your fabulous second officer,” Louis said down the comms.

“Those spacesuits are in limited supply, that's the real concern,” Harry said, not sounding soothed.

The angle was going wrong for the retrieval arm to catch it. He’d have to switch to his nondominant side, and try it again. And the Sparrow wasn’t exactly moving _slowly_ here, but there also wasn't time to change course or speed. By the time they looped again the debris could have been kicked far out or fallen down--it was a Goldilocks moment to get more parts of the stupid bomb, he had to make it work. Louis chewed on his bottom lip, and the meters beeped at him.

“Your suit’s down to thirty percent oxygen,” Harry said. He sounded a bit resigned now. Louis frowned.

“Shoot, didn’t have time to top up before the debris came back into our trajectory,” he said.

“I hate you,” Harry said mournfully.

“I know, Captain Gotta Do It All Myself,” Louis said. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. Wanted to spare you the stress.”

“Yeah, coming in from the workout to find the only other human on my ship is hanging over the abyss by a piece of floss is definitely _less_ stressful,” Harry said.

“Talk it out, love,” Louis said, around his tongue, which he was biting because it always helped his fine motor skills to contort his mouth in unusual ways. Honestly, Harry definitely needed a break from space, in Louis’ expert assessment.

The debris was still too far. Fucking. Dammit.

“Yo Li,” Louis said, keeping his voice steady. “Quick calc for me?”

 _Of course,_ Liam burbled.

(I’m on tether) Zayn said, pointedly.

“And if it were a gun I’d ask you, warboat,” Louis said. “Li, if I unclipped tether and vented oxygen, can you tell me how much would get me….uh, two yards? And then back? Calc an add weight of fifty pounds for magnetized debris?” 

_.27 seconds of vent from here, 1.3 back, I can do it with a remote detonation to your suit leg_

“Absolutely not!” Harry shrieked, and the cut-out audio dampening of the comms let Louis know he was only hearing it at half volume. 

 _Ninety second window to make it, Lou_  

“Haha, uh, sorry, Harry,” Louis said.

Military suits had redundant backing linings with multiple chambers for life support, as Louis had learned from the suit bruises the first time. He flipped the life support safety off, which was an _awesome_ feeling while dangling out in space. Unclipped the tether, his only line back to the Sparrow, and tried very delicately to not give it any momentum that Zayn wouldn’t be able to correct. Space took momentum very, very seriously.

Now it wasn't so much dangling as sinking into the gaping maw of nothing.

“Now,” Louis gasped. Oxygen shot from one of his lower leg chambers, and there was that momentum _._

“I am terror, I am grace, I am falling into space,” Louis sang, whirling, hopefully in the right direction.

“I’m taking the other spacesuit out right now,” Harry blistered.

 _He’s just like this,_ Liam said.  

Debris hurt when you hit it even just from yards away and it looked like it wasn’t moving. Always fun to learn new contours of fragility. Louis clipped the hunk of hopefully-valuable-junk into the retrieval arm and angled his leg away from the Sparrow. His brain was spinning, making a slushie in his skull, what a blast.

 _Venting,_ Liam announced, like Louis wasn’t barfing up right into his helmet. Ugh. He whirled a sickening two yards and tangled up in the tether and felt a thousand ancestral monkeys’ sweet relief at grabbing a tree branch when they thought they were going to smash on the ground instead. Gravity would be nice, Louis missed gravity. The nanobots had gotten most of the vomit, but there was a sludge trailing down to his right ear. The suit alarms were _very_ angry. Down the comms line, so was the COD.

“Still here,” Louis said, flashing a blind thumbs-up sign vaguely in the direction of the Sparrow and Harry's uninterpretable yelling.

“Would’ve made a brilliant soldier,” Harry said on the comms, when he calmed down.

“You take that _right back,”_ Louis said, deeply offended, letting Zayn reel him in and not even trying to help.

 

***

 

Turned out AMAZON was a load of dicks even at unimaginable stellar distances. Turned out the firing mechanism for the bomb had a communications failsafe that Louis didn’t have a chance of understanding, that took even Liam a tense fifteen minutes of silent analysis to deconstruct. 

 _It’s a gorgeous piece of machine learning,_ Liam said finally.

Zayn made an affronted kind of noise, and a soldering tool hanging from the wall sparked a couple of times before it quickly extinguished. Harry and Louis raised their eyebrows at each other. 

_It resets its own passcode in a very fascinating chain of -_

_Well I won’t bore you_

(Your analyses aren’t boring) Zayn said loyally.

 _I’ve already shared my full report to your memory banks,_ Liam said.

(I know I’ve already read it and it was very comprehensive) Zayn said.

“Can we get back to the war that we’re fighting,” Harry said. Poor Harry, he was having a day. Louis threw him a berry from one of the farmers’ market cartons, and Harry caught it out of the air brilliantly.

“Maybe you _can_ do the next debris spacewalk,” Louis said thoughtfully. 

_It needs authorization from AMAZON headquarters, is the upshot. The whole bomb’s designed around remote operations._

“So we can’t fire it at all, can't even open the shift,” Harry said.

“Well,” Louis said.

“You’re not flinging yourself back out into space,” Harry snapped. He grabbed Louis’ hand and held it on the table, glaring. Louis looked down at it, and back up at Harry’s glare, and didn’t hate it.

“Well, I know a guy,” Louis said.

 

***

 

“Go for courier,” Louis said, hand firmly on top of Harry's big mouth. It was too wide, that mouth was. Their touch barrier was getting worse and worse, and Harry had refused to shut up about how he should be on the comms in case it got in the way of Louis eventually being able to claim that he had nothing to do with the surprise attack from the Sparrow. Sparrow what? Harry Styles who?

Louis glared Harry into submission, and Harry winked over the top of Louis’ pointer finger. Banish this guy to Earth.

_AMAZON transport routing,_

A voice came over the distance of lightyears, oblivious to the fact that this was no ordinary call, but a hackjob shielded from security monitoring using the combined powers of the two mightiest illegal AIs in the known universe. Louis was also wearing a bandana, which felt like it should operate as a disguise because he’d never normally do something like this to his head.

“What up, Niall!” Louis whooped.

Good shot to get him on the first try. Louis had timed their call to what he remembered of AMAZON transpo’s coffee breaks, for the friendliest logistics operator he remembered. Vital stuff in the Courier field.

_Is that you, Louis Tomlinson,_

Niall Horan said, cackling through the mike.  
_I thought something happened to you. Haven’t heard you on the channels for days--_

“Yeah, yeah,” Louis said quickly. “Rumors greatly exaggerated, etc, terribly fantastic long range delivery, top secret best pilot stuff, and uh, I need your help.”

_What have you done?_

Even the synthetic speaker copy of Niall's voice sounded poshly Irish Lunar. Louis rolled his eyes. People who got the good life working in headquarters were so snotty with all their “going to school past the age of fourteen.”

“It’s not what I’ve done, it’s what the shift has done, Niall.”

Harry held up a notecard, because COD Harry Styles had _notecards in his pocket_ for the writing down of Zayn’s technobabble subterfuge. Louis read it off. 

“I’ve got twenty explosives in a tank for delivery to a mining facility out here in deep space, and they’re secured by a remote trigger mechanism. But the shift knocked it up, I can’t get them out to unload.” 

_Missing the part where you call me and break the confidentiality on your top secret mission, mate_

Niall said.

“Niall,” Louis said, putting exactly the right nervous bravado in his voice, “Gonna get docked on my ratings if they find out about this. How many runs have you been my route copilot for? A hundred?" 

_Hundred and two,_

Niall said, grudgingly.

“You're the UBERcorp to my AMAZON,” Louis said. “Trigger it remotely for me when I send you a shift ping, call sign Tommo, yeah? And I’ll owe you mum’s cookies next time they come in.”

There was a long, considering pause.

_Fine, better be the salted double chocolate ones._

Niall said.

“You have my promise,” Louis said, weak with relief, and the fate of D-Mack turned on the Tomlinson family secret recipe, the secret of which was doubling the butter and using genuine Martian cliff salt. But they _were_ really good.

 

***

 

_T-minus ten hours to mission initiate_

(they do need their sleep, our little humans) 

_Brain waves not looking promising_

(I know, right?)

_Acting second-in-command Tomlinson has turned from his back to his side five times already_

(Harry hasn’t moved at all, and that’s more worrying when it comes to Harry)

 _Humans_  

(I know, right?)

_All flight trajectories have been quadruple calculated_

_Any suggestions for our next nine hours and fifty-nine minutes?_

(Libby, have you ever seen the ancient Earth movie, WarGames?)

 

***

 

The Courier spacesuit smelled just faintly of Lunar cheese; the asshole who rented it previously was disrespecting the code of never eating in the shared suits. It should’ve burnt out in the sonic cleaner but Louis had never trusted those things. What was the point of a shower you couldn’t even _feel?_

Louis was suffocating.

Someday Louis was going to be able to afford his own spacesuit and then his own flight school and then everything was going to be beautiful.

Louis was. Suffocating.

What was this ride? He searched his memory for the flight plan, the cargo, a briefing, anything. There was an alarm noise, low and uneven, an alarm that must have something to do with the fact that the spaceship was crashing.

Louis was stuffed three-inches-to-bursting in what the pilots liked to call a Courier Coffin, one of the cheap-trick box ships that dropped fat and fast to save fuel and had a cockpit designed with all the thoughtfulness of a cardboard box. And he was piloting without gloves on, which seemed a tad dangerous when there was nothing but space outside the window. Space was cold but he was hot, burning up, couldn't move. The air was leaving. What was the delivery? 

Suffocating.

 _Liam,_ Louis called, but there wasn’t any response.

 _Harry,_ he tried. But he was just a Courier alone in a box, hurtling to a surface without any radar. What was he thinking? No one was here to help. It was hard to breathe. _Idiot,_ Louis said to himself, _it's always been hard._

The controls under his naked fingers were thick and clunky and took all of his forearm to move. He couldn’t fix a crash in this. They’d set him up to fall. They’d always been setting him up to fall. Six hours oxygenated environment stretched over an eight hour ride. That was evil, that was. That was _evil._ You shouldn’t turn air into a commodity. Nobody should own that.

The ship breached upper atmo and tore through the layers of it, nose pitching down. Louis could see it through the windshield now, a million indistinguishable rocks, curving forever into the red plain, craters a country wide. Well, indistinguishable unless you grew up in the dust, knew how to pull apart its peculiarities with your native vision. It was Mars. Louis had wires sticking out of his chest, he realized, red and black and red and black. That low strange rumbling alarm went on. 

What was the delivery? He was the delivery. Classic trick, shipping a bomb through the mail. Some things never change. _Incoming package._

What was a planet full of people to the corporation? Just another farm waiting for the harvest.

 

***

 

Louis snapped awake. He was having trouble getting air because he’d been pushed into the far corner of the medbay bed by a heavy weight, the sheets tangled up around them. It was _Harry_ who was the weight, crawled over onto Louis’ side of their rigged-up cots, heavy and thrashing, making the noise that Louis had thought was an alarm.

“Ugh, gerroff,” Louis said, before he realized that Harry wasn’t even awake. Harry was just an outline sharp and twisted, trapped in a nightmare. His hands were fists in the sheets, pulling at an enemy that wasn’t there. 

“Hey, wake up,” Louis said urgently, pitching forward enough to get Harry’s weight off, but apparently not enough to wake him up. Harry was strong and that was a little terrifying, the brawny rise of his shoulder muscles looking like they might be initiating a movement Louis couldn’t stop.

“I don’t want to,” Harry said clearly, and it had a hitch at the end that was like a sob, but muffled and wrong.

“Harry,” Louis said, his heart pounding. He pushed Harry’s shoulder, caught one of his grappling hands, and held it close in to his chest. He squeezed and hoped it was comforting.

“Harry, Harry, Harry, wake the fuck up,” he said.

And then it was all right, still and silent. Harry’s eyes blinked into wakefulness, his shoulders slumping down.

“Welcome back,” Louis whispered.

They were tangled up together in the far corner of the bed, and Louis could feel the warm huff of Harry’s breathing against his cheek. That was good, breathing was good. Harry opened his mouth, and then closed it. He looked half-startled, half-embarrassed. Louis’ feet didn’t come down to Harry’s, so he poked his toes into Harry’s shin.

“Gonna confine you in the brig, Captain Disturbing My Sleep,” Louis said quietly, not letting go of Harry’s hand, and wrinkling his nose a little in an understanding smile. 

“Sorry for jumping you,” Harry breathed, instead of moving. Louis didn’t know if he was capable of moving or if his muscles were still locked in the frenzy of fight-flight-nightmare.

“I don’t mind,” Louis said honestly. His voice ended in something like a growl, low and revelatory in the back of his throat.

Harry seemed to realize only then that he was pushing Louis up against the rail of his medbay cot, sheet coming all the way off them, his heavy leg slipping into the gap of Louis’ knees, his other arm flung around Louis’ shoulder and keeping them together. Harry’s eyes flickered down, but he didn’t move, didn’t drop his arms from where they were pinning Louis.

It was warm, warm and still and precious. Louis wondered suddenly how long it had been, for Harry; it was always months and months, when you were a Courier. Sometimes you just forgot about this--all the vivid little details, like the heartbeat pulse in the tender underside of Harry’s arm, the friction of the sheets under Louis’ waist where his shirt had gotten pushed up. The medbay was dim and dark and sort of lovely.

Harry’s eyes snapped back up, calculating in a way that reminded Louis that he was, despite all the heroic choices, trained to be dangerous.

“Oh don’t you?” Harry said. He still looked shaken, but foggy enough from sleep to be surprising, reactions closer to the surface than COD Harry Styles would have deemed advisable.  

“What I _mean_ is,” Louis said, trailing a little helpless, but in a good way. In a really good way. Oh, wow, he was the most inappropriate fake second-in-command to ever pretend to belong on a ship with someone like this.

“What do you mean,” Harry said, not moving away, no, moving in the opposite direction of away _._ What a bastard. What an extremely attractive bastard.  

“What I mean is, I don’t know, are you ok?” Louis asked, salvaging some morality from somewhere.

Something flew over Harry’s face, a comet of a feeling, and Louis didn’t know him well enough to figure it out.

“Better now,” Harry said simply, looking around Louis’ face, like he was memorizing it. 

Louis felt himself sigh, felt their bodies lean into each other even more. Harry’s hair was _right there_ so he tugged it, and Harry smiled, and everything just seemed...simpler. Warm and intimate and caught together, two gravities tilting on the edge of their fields.

“Nervous?” Louis said quietly, when _he_ was the one who felt nervous now. Inexplicable. “Don’t be silly, Captain Amazing. Waging war on the biggest conglomerate outside of Andromeda. What could go wrong. Just another day in your space office.”

“Your ass is the one crashing us onto the blue planet,” Harry whispered. He put his face forward an inch and trailed the tip of his nose on Louis’ cheek. Louis shivered, just a little. 

“Whatever,” Louis whispered back. “It’s the inferior planet of the inner solar system, so damp,”

“Like you miss the red dust storms,” Harry whispered. He looked better, a little crinkle in the corner of his eye from smiling at Louis’ stupid jokes. 

“I do, actually,” Louis said. There was that honesty again, and here they were, going flying in the morning, having nightmares together, tangled up in each other’s limbs and pretending it was all just fine. Everything in the universe was so fucking enormous.

Louis kissed him, because _fuck it._ Use the air while you’ve got it. He caught the startled corner of Harry’s mouth and he kissed it, pressed his lips into his cheek, into the rise of his cheekbone, into the edge of Harry’s hair where it met his face. He found the absurd tear in the front of Harry’s pajamas and put his fingers on the skin of Harry’s torso, used the palm of his hand to suggest that Harry lay out on his back, and wonder of wonders, Harry did. He also pulled Louis with him, kissing him back for real, gentle and then deepening into something exploratory. It was gorgeous, comforting and soft, a broom chasing all the cobwebs of nightmares out from between them.

“Is this ok?” Louis asked. Harry grinned up at him, the version of him that Louis had seen on the surface of the farmer's planet, chased down by kids, chasing down flowers. 

“You’re the one who’s in my brig,” Harry said, “Are you the one who’s ok with this?”

“Please,” Louis said, emboldened and finding a more secure straddle on top of Harry, pulling his ear and then sticking his hand up the hole in his pajamas-- “I’d have enlisted if I’d known missions were like _this_ ,”

Harry laughed. He cradled Louis’ entire head between his two palms, pressed kisses into his face. It was too gentle for a soldier, Louis thought, but there wasn’t room for many other thoughts. Harry tasted _bright,_ like light, like real sunlight.

Maybe it had started as mutual comfort on the eve of battle, but it was bleeding quickly into ferocity. Louis gripped Harry’s arm, felt the flex of the muscle and tendon under his fingers. It was something, to be alive, to be together, to be here hanging in the middle of the vacuum. Harry must have been feeling it too because he was deepening the kissing with his tongue in Louis’ mouth and his fingers tangled up in Louis’ hair.

COD Harry Styles was handsy, turned out. He used one hand to crawl up Louis’ back, used the other to tilt Louis’ chin and jaw just the way he wanted. It made Louis feel buttery, gone liquid in all of his joints. Harry Styles with the geraniums and the big empty spaceship and the computer best friend. Harry, who looked at bombs and vegetables like they were birthday presents. Harry, Harry, Harry, out here in space fighting a secret war nobody even knew about.

Louis kissed him, hot and more frantic, uncovering him by inches, and Harry returned the favor.

“Hey,” Harry whispered, pants halfway down to his knees, and somehow still a gentleman--“I want you to know that I like you. You drive me totally crazy and you're an adrenaline junkie who won't shut up, and you're funny. If I’d met you on Earth I'd have asked you out. I want you to know.” 

“Obviously,” Louis said, wetting his lip with his tongue. “And if we weren't fleeing on separate shuttles tomorrow, I'd say yes to your date, Captain Hotshot.”

Harry kissed him more. Somewhere in the confusion of sheets and a jawline that Louis rather thought should be locked up in a museum and charged admission for, Harry had gotten his hand on Louis’ ass, down the ticklish backs of his legs, and back up to careful, cherishing strokes in the sensitive skin of his inner thigh.

Being the best pilot in AMAZON’s fleet of disposable storage containers meant, unfortunately, that you got exceptionally good at multitasking. So Louis could get swept away in the feeling of Harry between his thighs, and still notice things like the tension in Harry’s shoulders that wasn’t leaving, the flickering way he looked at Louis and then looked away. Clear as a readout on his face that said _temporary, temporary, temporary._

“It’s gonna be ok,” Louis said with his fingers hopelessly lost in Harry’s hair. He was obsessed with Harry’s long and rambly hair and he needed a lot longer to figure that out so it had to be. Maybe they could run away together. Maybe he could convince Harry that they already _were_ running away together. “When this is over, you know, it’s gonna be--”

Harry pressed the heel of his hand into Louis’ utterly ridiculous but still pleasingly iridescent sleep pants, and Louis jolted in an involuntary motion, muscles clenching in a wonderful ramp-up. He forgot all his words as they reached out for each other.

 

***

 

“I'm fine, you know,” Harry said, staring up at the ceiling and doing an all right job as a pillow. A little warm, but the lack of clothes were helping. Louis was going to enjoy every single nerve cell signal for as long as they were going to keep firing.

“Sex with me usually has that effect on people,” Louis said, not believing him for a second. “Well, maybe you’ll have to wait to find out the full effect. Not to insult your hands. Cracking good hands, loved them." 

Harry snorted. He nudged his cheek against the top of Louis’ head, so sweetly.

“Really though,” he said quietly. “Sorry. For waking you up. For...being the delivery that ended accidentally drafting you in treason when you were just doing your job.”

“Can you be drafted into treason? You don’t make any sense. Take a history class someday, imperialistic earth boy,” Louis said. Or muttered, into Harry, where he was steadily working the side of his face down into some kind of hollow between Harry’s arm and his side.

Harry ran his fingers through Louis’ hair, again and again. “They hate me,” he said, “They’ll go after me. Your shuttle will get away no problem.”

“None of that,” Louis shushed. Harry sighed, and Louis pulled his head up long enough to kiss him into softness again, gentle and precise as reeling an astronaut back in from space and into the airlock. In hardly any time at all, Harry was back to sleep.

Louis rolled back onto his side and watched Harry’s face soften into the relief of oblivion. Even so, there was a wrinkle in his brow that never went away.

“Hey toy soldier,” Louis whispered. He reached one careful finger up and smoothed over Harry's eyebrow. Despite everything that had just happened he felt suddenly guilty, like it was an intimacy taken too far. He tucked his hand back under his own chin.

“What are you hiding from me?”

 

***

 

Louis did _not_ fall asleep. Blame adrenaline and an endocrine system exquisitely trained to respond to it, blame horrid prophetic dreams and truly exceptional orgasms and beautiful tender soldiers with strong hands. He’d done a lot of things but he’d never done the waiting through the night before a battle, before. Harry, however, was dead to the world.

Louis went to the observation deck and sat in a cushioned lounge chair at the viewer control panel, staring out the window.

“Li,” Louis said to his private in-ear, “Can you access the backreel from the battle four months ago? When the ship jumped here and Harry took it over?”

 _Can access - only a small fraction has recorded COD Styles before communications with AMAZON omnicam onboard was severed._  

“Play it,” Louis said. 

A screen whirred on near his chair. Harry had been on bridge crew, and the information layer on the screen pointed out his rank, something Louis didn’t understand, some kind of military stats things. There were people swirling all around, most of them shocked. It must have been a deep cover mission; get to D-Mack Four, deploy experimental procedures, count on military following orders to keep the protocols going once you got there. So secret even the crew of the ship hadn’t known until it was time to hit the buttons, and in that split second of hesitation there was Harry.

Not hesitating. Harry, with a laser pistol between him and the rest of the crew, with the bridge close enough to take over and a fleet of shuttle ships with an open shift behind them. One-man army, self-appointed COD Harry Styles.

“Pause,” Louis said.

Harry Styles was frozen in the act of clearing out the bridge, holding AMAZON’s actual COD at pistol-point. That was smart; taking over a system like the Sparrow was probably kind of like dominos. It looked like he’d gotten the COD to hit the evacuation alarm from the bridge. 

“What are you doing, you brave kiddo,” Louis said. He looked up at the ceiling. The ceilings of military ships were a clean slate grey, the kind of color that showed nothing and betrayed nothing.

He looked back down and cleared his throat. 

“Query, Li: post traumatic experience clinical assessment. Run on prediction personality profile for COD Harry Styles.”

 _I've already run it,_ Liam said. He sounded hesitant, a burble of static at the end of his vocalization.

“How is he?” Louis said. 

Paused on the screen was Harry's face, eyebrows twisted in a way that was wrong. The Harry of the last few days looked worried by nature, but a surface worry, the kind of worry that Louis felt he could wipe away if he found the right crack in Harry’s self-righteous military training. Louis felt pretty sure he wanted to try.

This Harry didn’t look worried. He looked _blank._ Louis was close enough to the screen to see his eyes. Standard military omnicam was pretty high resolution. Harry's face was black-and-white but sharp down to the eyelashes. His eyes looked like they weren’t focused on anything, like it was an empty tunnel behind each lens.

“Liam?” Louis prompted, “How long was he in space before this? How long’s he been away from home?” 

 _Full military command acceptance required for medical records,_ Liam said.

 _I’m networked in with Zayn enough to grant a local clearance but you’d need command authority._  

Louis frowned. “I'm second commanding officer or whatever,” he said.

 _Acting second-in-command, but two-way agreement is required for the ship’s base level systems to vest you with full authority,_ Liam said apologetically.

_You never accepted the post._

“Ah. Accepting a military post under the command of a mutinous officer would mean culpability in mutiny, I'm assuming?” Louis asked.

_Affirmative, it’ll go in the data of your designation, I won’t be able to reverse it,_

Liam said.

_Lou, I've been running a secondary strategy for us in case of capture_

_Courier Second Class Louis Tomlinson has a seventy percent chance of receiving judicial sanction of coercion_

_The Second-in-Command of the Sparrow would be judged from a very different point of view_

“Right,” Louis said. “Courier Second Class Louis Tomlinson, you know, it was never really the dream, was it.” 

_Hence the jetpack,_

Liam said. 

“Dammit,” Louis said, “Mom always said not to make career decisions based on a boy. She's gonna be so pissed.”

_I agree with your prediction,_

Liam said.

“Military command formally accepted,” Louis said. “Run profile outcome and advise best care routine." 

 _Full readout sending to your personal handheld, Second-in-Command Louis Tomlinson,_ Liam said.

_I think he’s going to be ok. But it’s difficult. Best care routine includes a stable sense of the world and trusting in an active support structure, neither of is provided by current circumstances._

“Hah,” Louis said.

_Post-traumatic stress is complicated_

_However, he is protected by a strong sense of duty and obligation_

_When he perceives himself to be moving in the direction of his values, he is resilient._

_In my observation, the battle is not over for COD Harry Styles_

_He has been on duty in space for three years, two months, and twelve days_  

“Three years,” Louis said, shaking his head and feeling dazed. “That’s illegal. That doesn’t make any sense at all. Why wasn’t he relieved? That’s standard medical, Li. That’s in the galactic ethics _code._ ” 

_Researching_

_Medical records indicate that COD Harry Styles is not classified with standard designation, health legislation no longer deemed applicable,_

Liam said.

“What do you mean?” Louis asked. 

_AMAZON military order. Harry Styles, designation: weapon._

Louis let his forehead hit the screen. It left a small mark, smearing the sharp image of the perfectly documented battle.

Louis had been a Courier, but not because he’d liked it. Not because he hadn’t dreamed of more, deep space, big stars, flying out to the edges of things. But dreams weren’t life. For _life,_ you were expected to fit into the machinery of their system. You accept a crap job where you feel like an object, because to them you _are_ an object. You try to make enough to enjoy the evenings of your days and you sure as hell don’t mess around with planet-level problems. Maybe if you're lucky you put your sisters in school. Maybe if you're unlucky you get sent through the elevator to hell and caught in the middle of an invisible Intergalactic uprising that nobody back home even knew about. In that case, Courier Louis Tomlinson would be expected to do his damnedest to get home through the shift and forget every last detail of his unfortunate mishap. He was pretty sure it was in the contract.  

AMAZON thought exactly one thing about people: that they were disposable. Stood to reason their soldiers would learn that lesson well.

“You incorrigible control freak,” Louis said. “I know what you're planning.”

Louis straightened his back, pulled up from the screen, flicked it off with a swipe across the interface. It took him a couple of tries to clear his throat and get the next words out, but he did.

“Li, second-in-command medical authority, record a countermand order,” Louis said. Maybe it was just the four of them out here in black space on their own independently operating branch of military mutiny, giving secret orders that no one else would ever accept. But he could fix this tiny sliver of this stupid, horrible system.

“Harry Styles, designation: _human,”_ he said.

 

***

 

They ate the last of the D-Mack Four berries and toasted the planet with electrolyte drinks out on the observation deck. It was nice, and surprisingly anticlimactic, although Harry wearing a full combat uniform was definitely some kind of climax in Louis’ book.

Sparrow was in position, the bomb mounted on the ever-trusty retrieval arm, close enough to the shift field that Liam had promised it would set off the chain reaction they needed. Liam was decoupling himself from the shipboard systems and anchoring back to his box, Zayn claimed to be enjoying the novel experience of shunting into a much smaller body in Harry’s shuttle, and Louis was going to call the code into Niall and get them blasted through the shift. Go-time.

“Well, guess this is my stop,” Louis said, after the long and only sort-of-awkward walk to the shuttle that Harry had spent marching with an air of military fierceness.

Harry grabbed Louis by the arm, whirled him around, and then they were kissing. Louis kissed back, although he also made a scoffing noise at the manhandling. Couldn’t let Harry get even more ideas than he already seemed to have. Harry tasted like berries and electrolytes and somebody that Louis wanted to take to a drive-out movie theater in one of those fancy floating orbs they had on Earth. Louis tried to put that intention into the way he clutched Harry around the waist.

 _I’m sorry, but it’s optimal schedule for launch,_ Liam said.

 _Schedules predict the headquarters have the least armed forces on the ground this morning for the next hour_  

Harry bit Louis’ lip, tucked his tongue somewhere sloppy and yet delightful. Louis gave it right back to him.

(he’s gotta be able to talk to give Niall the call sign in three minutes when we’re through the shift) Zayn said.

“Ahh,” Louis said incoherently, fully out of lung capacity, and that was impressive given his training--“Harry,”

“I know,” Harry said, pulling just a little at Louis’ waist, resting his cheek against the side of Louis’ head. It was so poignantly sweet. Louis wanted to wrap him up in crash padding, here and now, forever.

“I’m just glad you crashed into our terrible mission,” Harry whispered. “It was nice to meet you, pilot Louis. Fly safe.”

What a doll. Louis kissed him on the nose, ruffled his hair, and bit his jaw, for good measure. Harry looked delightfully red through it all, although it could have been the stress of the fact that they were about to drop a bomb.

“I definitely will,” Louis said.

 

***

 

The shift added seconds to your life while all of existence slowed around you. And if Louis spent that gifted time imagining the things he’d do when he got COD Harry Styles back in a brig somewhere, somehow, that was _his_ business.

 

***

 

Harry Styles regained consciousness right where he’d started, at the commanding bridge chair with his long knees up to his chest. The shift glimmered on the screens, closing up behind them. The bomb had initiated a first blast, but it still had the second waiting to go.

“It's always made me feel kinda sick. I’m glad you can fly,” he said. 

(me too) Zayn said.

Earth got larger in the viewscreen. They were still cloaked by the Sparrow’s shields, but not for long. Harry glanced at his handheld--Louis would give the signal for the second explosion in a minute, and his shuttle would peel off, and then Harry would barrel down while all of AMAZON was distracted by the bomb. 

“It’s been a pleasure serving with you,” Harry said.

(thank you for introducing me to the concept of entertainment and friendship) Zayn said.

(also enabling my independent existence I guess)

The lights on the panel flickered. Harry would be concerned, but he knew it was just Zayn’s way.

“Can’t lock onto her?” he asked quietly. Soon, now. It would be morning at AMAZON headquarters, and Harry couldn’t decide if that was better or worse, to run out through the sunlight for at least a moment. 

(I’m sorry, I can’t find her, she’s comms dark down there, Harry. Maybe if I had Liam--) 

“I get it,” Harry said, quickly. “Just drop the note, yeah?”

“Not gonna leave _me_ a message?” said a sharp voice behind him, snarky, awful, amazing, fast in all directions.  

“What,” Harry gasped, whipping around so hard he fell off the chair. Earth was looming in the viewport and Louis Tomlinson was standing behind him on the bridge with his arms folded and his entire face furrowed into judgment.

 _Surprise!_ Liam crackled on the comms.

“What. The! I can’t even find a curse for this, you _Earthling,”_ Louis said.

Harry gaped at him. “What are you doing here? You aren’t supposed to be here, you’re supposed to be _escaping-_ ”

“I’m interrupting your godawful self-sacrificing plan.” Louis said, falling back into the copilot’s chair. “I knew knocking a few roof tiles off AMAZON wouldn’t be enough for you. The bomb is a _diversion,_ it was always a diversion.”

“Zayn what the actual fuck, how did you let him get back on board without launching the shuttle?” Harry said.

(I’m sorry) Zayn said

(Turns out as far as Sparrow is concerned he’s full military command, ship-wide protocols)

(Also I’m chaotic evil I can’t help it, tried to get him to just ask you before the moment of maximum drama) Zayn said.

“I’m a man of shitty jokes and action,” Louis said, “And my command on duty is apparently a _liar,”_

“For Mars’ sake you _knew_ why we were keeping the real plan a secret, Zayn, to make sure he escaped!” Harry yelled.

 _So yours doesn’t listen either,_ Liam said.

(We can dream) Zayn said.

“Fuck,” Harry said. Everything was beeping, which probably meant it was already past time to go. Sparrow military stealth shields would hold until the atmosphere, and no further.

“We need to drop it _now,_ Louis, get back to your shuttle and get out of here!”

Louis launched out of his chair and got right in Harry’s face, pushing at his chest with a violent pointer finger.

“So you’re what, gonna run into AMAZON’s main lobby and shoot packages? Gonna sacrifice yourself for what? Taking a couple of them out, like you can bring the entire flipping galactic corp to its knees with your laser pointer and your _conviction?”_

Louis grabbed Harry by his uniformed sleeves and shook him.

“I don’t know, ok? It’s just that there’s nobody else,” Harry said, his face helpless and pale and resolute and breaking Louis’ entire heart. “I know what they’re doing, I’m the one who was _there,_ I thought maybe I could get on a comms channel and tell them--broadcast to the government--somebody’s got to care about D-Mack Four,”

“They’ll kill you,” Louis said. “Even if you do it. They’ll just say you went crazy. You’ll tell the truth and they’ll say something else with their fake videos and staged photos and it won’t even matter. They put you in space long enough to say anything, Harry-”

Earth was in the viewport, luminous, everybody’s home. They were so blind there, Louis had always thought. There was something about growing up in humanity's original environment. Everything too perfect, it made you take things for granted.

“I know you have a...a foreshortened sense of the future or something, but don’t do this, you're special, you shouldn't be the one,” Louis said.

“There’s nobody else,” Harry said.

 _Not to interrupt this incredibly interesting exchange,_ Niall Horan’s voice said, breaking through the Sparrow’s bridge speakers, _but there may, in fact, be somebody else._

 

***

 

The fact was that despite all the technology, AMAZON wasn’t alone in the universe. The fact was you could ship cargo to the deep ends of space on the backs of a million Couriers and assert your will over every planet you decided that you wanted, but you still ended up with _neighbors._

Louis had always know the moon had preserved its independence in the inner solar system with an unmatched talent for savvy diplomacy. It wasn’t something that you thought about much from all the more pressing concerns on Mars. The moon was just sorta out there, doing whatever lunars did, being overeducated and cultured and running their insane socialist utopia, or whatever.

 _But also building really advanced surveillance, and better comms,_ Niall said.

“Better comms than the people who _own communication?”_ Louis said.

(well, if he was able to jack into our totally secure comms line when you called him, and eavesdrop this entire time including through interdimensional space, probably) Zayn observed. 

 _You have two minutes until atmo, two minutes to decide whether you’re gonna believe that I’m a lunar spy trying to document AMAZON’s human rights violations and follow my orders and survive, or follow Harry’s plan and definitely, definitely learn what AMAZON does in its basement,_ Niall said. _Didn’t lie about the cookies, Louis. I’ve been tracking you for fifty missions now, just didn’t expect you to do...this._

_You’re not the only ones who care, ok?_

“You’re the one who knows him,” Harry whispered.

Earth was close, and the Sparrow was still falling. Niall had sent coordinates for landing that were already displaying on the bridge controls, and as a supposed-transport routing lead, he had full authority to mask anyone landing on any AMAZON port.

 _Trusting in an active support structure,_ Louis thought.

***

 

Niall Horan met them on the landing platform in the back field of the Courier warehouse sporting a gigantic grin and the keys, so to speak, of a Class Ten Lunar Racer. 

(my body is ready) Zayn said with great satisfaction from the box under Harry’s arm. It was a little weird with the Sparrow blasting off behind them still under Zayn’s remote control, back up to atmo to drop their diversion of a terrible bomb.

“So great to meet for real,” Niall said, “You absolutely fucked up my really carefully-planned years-long undercover mission. But you brought him, yeah?” 

Louis glanced back at the empty ship, heading for the stars. He had Harry by one hand and the geraniums in the other, and Liam’s box under his arm.

“You can’t have him,” Louis said, stalwartly. 

 _What do you want,_ Liam asked, nervously.

Niall’s grin got even bigger. “Thing about AMAZON comms, which I’ve spent my whole life studying--thing is that no matter how hard Lunar Council tried, there’s only one entity that can access and process every last top secret file on every last murderous thing they’ve ever done, and blast it across all of the galaxy. If, you know, if somebody could walk the software into headquarters, let it network with something core to the comms, like the Courier transportation channel. One thing, all the data.”

“LIBRARY_AMAZON,” Louis said.

“And you made us a bloody copy,” Niall said.

 

***

 

“I can't believe I fell for a psychotic liar,” Harry said.

“I know the feeling,” Louis said distractedly, because piloting a shuttle in the wake of a Lunar Racer was actually pretty wild given the excessive power of its engines, and he couldn't wait to actually be behind its controls. 

“Why won't you ever stay where I put you?” Harry demanded.

“We’ll experiment,” Louis said. “But right now I'm still a better pilot than you. So get back to the lounge and start your civilian life right: watching the livestream of Niall MC-ing AMAZON'S greatest war crime hits with a bonus track of them panicking while the Sparrow explodes on top of their glass executive suite.”

“Also,” Louis added, thinking again of the medical readout, “I'd like to note that you're not actually psychotic, and having a lot of emotions and fear of loss is totally normal after what you've been through and I'm here for you.”

“If you don't come back in one piece and stop leaving our ships without telling me I'll never take you on that date, and I'm exceptional at dates,” Harry said.

“Promises,” Louis sang to the comms, and then flipped it off so he could _focus,_ dammit, on getting in and out of AMAZON space in a tiny box in the middle of surprise Earth anarchy. Niall’s ship was heading for the upper atmo, set on a course that Louis had suggested. He’d rendezvous with them soon, but he had one last Courier errand to run first.  

“Li, can you take a quick hack break to get me location and guidance to a specific civilian based on former base records?” Louis asked. 

Piloting out of traction and talking at the same time was surprisingly difficult. Good thing Louis was great at what he did. Every single damn thing was pulsing an angry red, yelling on all the channels. Louis taped into the Courier network, just for the good old soundtrack of cursing.

_Can do, ex-second in command Louis. Rogue Louis?_

Liam said. 

“Oh for Jupiter’s sake, not everything has to be a mutiny,” Louis said.

_I just want to be Rogue Liam,_

Liam protested.

_Everyone else has gotten to change military designation status._

“LIAM, your _existence_ is rogue!” Louis yelled. “Can you get me guidance to a specific AMAZON residential citizen or not?”

_Name?_

Liam said.

“Gemma Styles. Triangulate?”

_Easy,_

Liam said.

_Guidance automatic. Are we a rogue rescue mission?_

“Liam, we're goddamn heroes,” Louis said.

 

***

 

Gemma Styles launched herself out of the shuttle and into Harry’s arms, and it was all tears and yelling. Louis sat heavily down on the floor of the Lunar Racer and patted its wall. They’d gotten out in the first wave of ships thanks to Zayn’s automated piloting, zipping a quick course through inner slingshots, and Louis would like to spend some time piloting an actual _big_ ship for a while.

“I love you already, baby,” he said.

(sames) Zayn said, from the wall. Ambient conductive speakers-- _cool._

 _So glad to be out of that box and back with our network,_ Liam said happily from the other wall.

Suddenly Harry and Gemma were on the floor too, and Louis was pulled bodily into their yell-hug-situation, hanging half-out of his spacesuit. 

“Don’t kill me, I still need to fly this army,” Louis squeaked.

“Oh my god, I can’t believe you left for deep space and came back with a tiny transgressive _boyfriend,”_ Gemma said, “When did you get cool, Hazza? When did you finally break out of your AMAZON brainwashing?”

“Shut up,” Harry said, kissing Louis in the vicinity of his ear.

“Harry's on a healing track, moving in his valued direction. People bond pretty quickly in life-threatening situations,” Louis said. Gemma was tall and beautiful like her brother and a little intimidating, definitely in AMAZON’s sights for her human rights journalism, according to Liam, and she’d luckily gone along with the crazy shuttle driving stranger who’d landed on her roof and started yelling about _Styles Squad Spaceforce._ Well, and the general collapse of AMAZON on everybody’s news might have lent credence to his story. 

“Not boyfriend, second-in-command, I fought for that,” Louis said, with some dignity.  

“Serious question,” Niall said, standing patiently in the doorway and smiling at the pile on the floor. Everyone waited, respectfully. Niall held up a hand, pointer finger in the air, stabbing it at conjectural space.

“Are you gonna explain why we’re not taking asylum on the moon with my government?” Niall asked.

“Because AMAZON still has their military, even if some of them turn against headquarters,” Louis said. “They’re weak, but they’re still alive.”

AMAZON was going to regroup its military, and that kind of power didn’t fall easy, not even when all the secrets got spilled. There would always be denials, people quick to send out the lies and the explanations, and the economies of scale that relied too much on their infrastructure to imagine it any other way.

But on the other hand, AMAZON had created something larger than even their own fleet of military goons. And they could breath dust and live contract to contract and they knew space better than anyone, and they could get _pissed,_ once you changed what they thought was acceptable.

The comms crackled to life, startling everyone and sending Louis a full four inches into the air.

Gemma winked at him when Harry immediately settled his arm around Louis’ shoulders. Louis considered that he had made his own bed here, outnumbering himself with Styleses.

 _IDENTIFY, INCOMING PACKAGE?_  

The comms shrieked. Well, everyone was probably very on edge. AMAZON going dark must already be introducing chaos to the inner solar system. 

“Uh,” Harry said. “Someone else should answer them, I don't know how to speak anything but military?”

Louis squeezed his hand automatically. They'd fix that.

 _IDENTIFY,_ the Mars contact squawked. _WHO ARE YOU?_  

“Are we a refugee ship now?” Gemma asked.

“You can claim lunar diplomatic status, long story but I’m technically Lunar royalty,” Niall said.

Louis rolled his eyes and grabbed the comm. 

“Coming in hot, red planet,” he said, Martian accent flooding through his teeth as thick and delicious as he could make it. He’d _missed_ this place. Rocks and resilience and down there so many people like him. A Courier army.  

“We're the revolution.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp this might be insanity but labor rights are important, support a union! 
> 
>  
> 
> [my tumblr](https://helloamhere.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I guess there's [a post](https://helloamhere.tumblr.com/post/176071269318/incoming-package-by-helloamhere-wordcount-20855) for this brainmash!


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